


If I Lose Everything In The Fire

by HexMeridian (myrainbowshoelaces)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Drift Compatibility, Emotional Baggage, F/F, F/M, Horrorterrors - Freeform, Jaeger Pilots, Kaiju (Pacific Rim), M/M, Mecha, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prior Pacific Rim Knowledge Unnecessary, Quadrant Confusion, Quadrant Vacillation, Sexuality Crisis, The Drift (Pacific Rim), The Kaiju are Horrorterrors, Trans Character, Trans Dave Strider, Trans Rose Lalonde, Trolls as Precursors, Yes there are transgender characters in this fanfiction, homophobic language (in flashbacks), minor character death (flashback), transphobia (in flashbacks)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:45:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 108,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrainbowshoelaces/pseuds/HexMeridian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kaiju - or Horrorterrors, as the trolls call them - first invaded Earth through a transdimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Serving the Condesce in her quest to add Earth to the Alternian Empire, these monsters have terrorized humanity for twelve years. With the help of rebel troll factions and the adaptation of Alternian mind integration technology - The Drift - the Interspecies Defense Program has fought back as the last line of defense between the Kaiju and Earth.  </p><p>Karkat Vantas was a Jaeger pilot, fought for freedom in the Assault on the Breach that brought trolls to Earth. The loss of his co-pilot left him bitter and full of rage, but desperate times have lead to him being recruited to join the fray once more. </p><p>Dave Strider is the best and brightest the Interspec program has to offer. Jaeger Restoration Project Head, highest simulation score on record, and younger brother of the Deputy Marshal - except he's not allowed in a Jaeger. </p><p>Nobody expects them to be Drift Compatible. </p><p> </p><p>  <em>If I lose everything in the fire, I'm sending all my love to you... </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Wonder You've Got Demons

**Author's Note:**

> With special thanks to my amazing beta, [Tazzypillar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tazzypillar/pseuds/Tazzypillar), and a shout out to everyone on Discord for their encouragement and enthusiasm for every fic project I put together. Y'all inspire me.

_No wonder, you’re so stubborn_  
_Nobody ever made you dig deeper_  
_No wonder you’ve got demons_  
_Everything you ever did is coming back around_  
\-- From ‘Our Demons’ by The Glitch Mob  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuC5Os9fpsU))

__

Miracle _is going all systems critical._

_Karkat grasps frantically at the manual systems override switches for the Mech, trying to ignore the blood that spatters the console. The contrast of candy red and dark purple turns his stomach, but he fights through that and the pain in his numerous wounds, trying to compensate for the energy spike._

_“Right arm’s dead and gone, my brother,” Gamzee groans from his harness, Karkat turning to look at him. His helmet’s been ripped off and he has several deep gashes across his face, his blood dripping purple onto the rest of his suit. “Coolant’s leaking, shit be flashin’ on the console like it’s twelfth perigee’s eve up in here, we gotta bail out.”_

_“We can’t!” Karkat grunts through clenched teeth. “That piece of shit horrorterror is still alive and we’re the only ones still up and fighting!”_

_The comms are crackling, Sollux yelling at them through the static. “_ Miracle _, you are going critical, you need to eject, Karkat, Gamthee, EJECT!”_

_Karkat hears the shrieking sound of claws scraping against metal, feels the spray of the ocean rise up through the hole the horrorterror has just torn in their Mech’s head and slam him against the side of the cockpit, cables snapping and armor tearing._

_Gamzee is yelling at him but he doesn’t need to, Karkat can feel him through the Drift, telling Karkat everything is going to be okay, he is starting the eject sequences, they’re gonna get out._

_And Karkat watches, pinned helplessly against the hull, as the beast drags his co-pilot out of the cockpit with its impossible nightmarish tentacles, leaving Karkat alone and in agony. His ears fill with the screams as he feels Gamzee’s fear, panic, horror, silence, as he pathetically pilots_ Miracle _away from the fight alone, everything cacophonous noise and dissonant shrieking of alarms and tearing metal, and suddenly everything begins to fade to black. He spins in the darkness, trying to yell but unable to make a sound. Gamzee’s face is suddenly in front of him, blood pouring out of his mouth in a wordless scream, his face split with diagonal gashes, claw marks from the spines along the horrific tentacles. He smiles, his teeth purple-stained and broken, and his voice is part agonized, haunting laugh, part scream:_

_“You couldn’t save me, brother. How can you save yourself?”_

“FUCK!”

Karkat jerked awake, sopor falling with a wet ‘slop’ noise over the side of his recuperacoon. It took him a few minutes to get his bearings, trying to remember where he was, what had happened, though reality returned to him quickly. The Assault on the Breach. _Miracle_ getting destroyed. Gamzee…

Two and a half sweeps and he was still having nightmares. Fucking great.

He groaned, climbing out of his pod and stumbling across his respiteblock. The too-bright Earth sun filtering through the window made him wince, but he managed to find his clothes and drag them on. If the sun was out, he was running late for work, which was fucking fantastic. Just another kilo of shit to throw on the pile that was his life. At least he hadn’t thrown up this time.

His temporary quarters were less than a mile from the construction site and he walked quickly, pulling his thick coat up over his shoulders to brace against the freezing wind. He could see the skeletal frame of the incomplete wall from the doorstep of the building, all thick metal beams and hanging wires visible through the falling snow. He was coming up on two Earth months in Alaska, and he was pretty sure he was never going to get used to the cold.

He punched his time card and headed for his locker, gearing up while ignoring his fellow workers. A good percentage of them were troll refugees also, other survivors of the Assault on the Breach, but nobody ever seemed to be comfortable around him, especially not the humans. Karkat couldn’t blame them. He was short for a grown troll, but ‘short’ still meant six and a half feet, and the bright red of his eyes (and his blood) meant even the other trolls avoided him. Nothing like that refugee-mutant times two combo to make a guy unpopular.

The foreman, a squat human man, scowled at him as he headed for the ladders up to the wall’s midsection, his voice muffled by a thick beard. “Vantas,” he growled. “You’re late.”

“And you’re a sack of pink meat and fucked up mammalian biology,” he snapped, shoving his goggles onto his head. “What is this, State The Obvious day?”

He heard the foreman laugh. “‘Sack of pink meat’,” he chuckled. “That’s a good one, keep ‘em coming, your creative insults are a bright light in this shithole.”

Karkat snorted. “Things are that bad?”

“Wind’s getting worse,” the foreman grumbled, rubbing his hands together in a futile attempt to get warm. “Already lost three guys at the top of the wall today.”

Karkat winced. That was high, even when the weather was this bad. “Guessing you had three more guys lined up to take their place though, right?” He didn’t mean to sound callous, but he’d been building this damned wall up and down the Pacific coast for a sweep, he’d gotten used to the way things worked.

“Always do,” the foreman shrugged. “We gotta work if we wanna eat.”

“Story of my life,” Karkat grumbled. “At least on Alternia it wasn’t this fucking cold.”

“Price you pay for freedom, my alien friend,” the foreman gave him a thumbs up.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you too, shitsack,” Karkat replied, though with less venom than the words would normally inspire, and started climbing the ladder.

His work assignment for the day had him midway up the main section of the wall, soldering sections of support structures together, and he buried himself the process, the vibrating instruments and biting wind keeping him in the moment, holding the memories and the nightmares at bay. By the time his mandatory break rolled around he was focused, the past firmly where it belonged, and he rappelled down the massive steel beam to the ground, ready to get out of the cold, however briefly.

A crowd had gathered around the foreman near the front of the site and Karkat joined them, though he couldn’t figure out the source of the commotion at first. Ration distribution was always a massive rumpus asshole factory, but nothing this extreme, workers were yelling and threatening to throw things, for fuck’s sake.

“What’s going on?” he asked the nearest troll, a bronzeblood he’d shared a worksite with back in Nome, he couldn’t remember the guy’s name for the life of him.

“Beats me,” the guy shrugged. “Heard there were three more deaths up on the top of the wall today.”

“Me too,” Karkat grimaced. “News like that doesn’t usually rile the masses up this hard though. There’s gotta be something else going on.”

A human standing in front of them turned around at their conversation. “There’s been another Kaiju attack,” he said, the fear evident in his voice. “In Sydney. Foreman just got word, they’re trying to get the newsfeeds working, but everyone’s losing their shit about it.”

Karkat felt like his stomach had filled with ice. Up ahead he saw the foreman hit a dusty old projector with a wrench, making it hum to life and illuminate the screen rigged up by the site’s entrance, displaying a newscaster mid-sentence.

“-live from the devastation in Sydney, where a Category Four Kaiju broke through the Coastal Wall in less than an hour!” Karkat watched the footage, the horrorterror huge and smashing through metal and concrete, people screaming, and felt simultaneously ill and utterly numb at the sight.

Around him his fellow workers were restless, scared and angry at the news, their voices suddenly rising in exclamations of dismay, of fear.

“It broke through the wall?”

“It’s supposed to be impenetrable!”

“What the hell are we even building this thing for?!”

The newscaster continued. “The Kaiju was finally run to ground by _Law and Order_ , a Jaeger from the recently founded Interspecies Defense Program.” The footage cut to the fight, the horrorterror shrieking as the massive Jaeger smashed its head against the edge of the Sydney Opera House, its red visor glinting in the sunlight as it swung a weapon that looked to Karkat to be part cane, part sword. A few of the others in the crowd cheered and clapped, and Karkat felt his teeth clench involuntarily, remembering the days when people had cheered for him. He saw Gamzee’s face in his mind’s eye again and felt sick to his stomach.

Karkat shoved his dead moirail out of his mind, focusing on the projection again. The program had cut to footage of an interview with one of the pilots, a tall cerulean-blooded troll woman wearing a cocky smirk. Karkat vaguely recognized the caste sign emblazoned on the breastplate of her armor, and he wondered if she’d been part of the team that had come through the Breach during the Assault two and a half sweeps ago. It wouldn’t have surprised him - all of the pilots he’d rode with back then had been exceptional, especially the ones that had survived, and most of the survivors hadn’t gone running away from the fight at the first chance they got either, like he did.

“The Interspec program’s gonna save this planet from getting wiped out,” she said, flipping her long black hair and flashing a smile that clearly displayed her fangs. Her attitude was characteristic of those in her position in the hemocaste, and even though Karkat tried not to judge people by hemospectrum stereotypes, this pilot was making it difficult. “ _Law and Order_ has ten kills on record after today, and we aren’t gonna stop until every last Kaiju Horrorterror is wiped out.”

“Ranger Serket,” the newscaster said, brandishing a microphone. “What do you say to reports that you and your co-pilot have an especially volatile relationship that’s uncharacteristic and even considered unsuitable for pilots of your species?”

The troll gave the newscaster a scathing look out of her one good eye. The other was covered by an eyepatch, of all things, making her look like even more of an arrogant shithead. Granted, both of those qualities were common in Mech pilots. “Don’t know where you got those reports, but you can tell them to-” she devolved into a string of buzzing Alternian curse words that made all the trolls in the crowd gasp and mutter amongst themselves before the program cut to a different reporter. Karkat wasn’t impressed, having used worse language daily since he’d pupated, but the looks of confusion among the humans entertained him.

“Trust me,” he muttered to the human workers in front of him, making them jump slightly. “You don’t want to know what she just said.”

The sound of the newscast was drowned out by a loud droning sound above them, and Karkat joined the rest of the crowd in looking up, seeking the source. A pair of military helicopters passed overhead and hovered, one of them touching down just outside the construction site, making the already strong winds roar even more violently. His fellow workers crowded through the open gate, hoping proximity would inform them, but Karkat didn’t need to join them. He recognized the spirograph logos on the choppers even at a distance and felt his chest tighten, his lips pressing together to form his mouth into a grim line.

It had finally happened. Two and a half sweeps of moving around, keeping a low profile, not drawing attention to himself, but the inevitable had finally come to pass.

They had found him.

A pair of heavily-muscled humans in blue fatigues thinned out the crowd with stern shouts and threatening waves of nightsticks, clearing space. By the time Karkat had made it out of the gate and into the snow, the crowd had been dispersed and the chopper’s passenger was on the ground, standing facing the construction site with his arms behind his back and his face partially hidden by a pair of pointed sunglasses.

He saw Karkat in the crowd and gave him a nod, the wind making his white-blonde hair whip around violently. “Mister Vantas,” he called, his voice carrying across the cleared path. “You’re a hard troll to find.”

“Dirk Strider,” Karkat replied, his helmet tucked under one arm as he stepped forward, examining the new insignia on his jacket. “Looking sharp. Deputy Marshal, huh? Guess they finally promoted you.”

“That’s what happens when time passes,” Dirk shrugged. He looked almost the same as the last time he and Karkat had met, though he had a few more scars on his face and neck and some telltale strands of grey in his hair despite still being under fourteen sweeps. It was easy for Karkat to forget that they were practically the same age. “How long’s it been?”

“Two and a half sweeps,” Karkat said, trying to keep his face neutral.

“There somewhere we can talk?” Dirk asked, taking a few steps forward. The blades of the chopper had stopped spinning but the wind was still howling, making it difficult for either of them to speak in anything softer than a shout.

Karkat gestured towards the gate into the construction site, shrugging. “It isn’t much but at least the wind isn’t fucking shit up in here.”

The two of them walked through the gate and Karkat made his way to the lockers, the few remaining workers clearing out. They knew better than to lurk when a Deputy Marshal from the Defense Corps was in the area, no matter how curious they were about the circumstances. Karkat leaned against one of the old worktables, pulling off his gloves and putting them down next to his helmet before folding his arms and giving Dirk a scrutinizing look. “So,” he said after an awkward pause. “Guess you tracked me down, huh?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Dirk said. He was leaning against one of the lockers, still wearing his shades. Some things really were universal constants. “Hard to find a man who travels with the wall. I’ve been through Anchorage, Bethel, Nome. Even someone as …” he looked Karkat up and down, making the troll scowl. “Unique… as you, is tough to find if he’s chasing shifts to make a living.”

“The fuck are you even looking for me for anyway?” Karkat growled. “I’m retired. Out of commission. Grounded. Opting out.”

“We’ve spent the last six months remodeling and upgrading what’s left of the last original Alternian Mech,” Dirk replied. “Retrofitting it with human Jaeger tech, integrating the firepower with the troll Drift technology so they can be repurposed for the Interspec Program.”

Karkat’s eyes widened. All of the Mechs that had gone through the Breach during the Assault had been destroyed, he’d been there, he’d seen it happen. Except for the one he’d dragged to the frozen Alaskan shore alone after he’d lost his co-pilot.

“ _Miracle_ ,” he breathed.

Dirk gave him a slight nod. “We used what was left of her to make a new Jaeger,” he said. “Still runs like the old Alternian models, but we gave her few upgrades to work with our systems.” He paused, looking Karkat up and down before continuing. “Needs a pilot.”

Karkat scoffed, disbelief evident on his face. “And what, I’m your first choice? Really?”

“No,” Dirk’s arms were folded. “You’re my _only_ choice. Every other troll pilot who came through in the Assault on the Breach five years ago is either already working with us or they’re dead.”

Karkat swallowed, reflecting on the gravity of that statement. He’d known things were bad, and it had been two and a half sweeps, but really, he was the only one left? He thought about the Assault on the Breach, the army of stolen Mechs they had used to take down as many horrorterrors as possible before they got to the coastlines. Gamzee’s blood-spattered face rose unbidden in his mind and he felt sick again, his hands involuntarily gripping the edge of the table.

“I was still in the Drift with Gamzee when that horrorterror ate him, Dirk,” he said, finally. “I felt it eat him. My…” he swallowed hard, forcing himself to stay calm. Tears wouldn’t be even remotely helpful in this situation and he’d become well practiced at keeping them at bay. “My moirail, my best friend. I can’t have anyone else in my head like that again.”

Dirk sighed. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, Karkat,” he said, an edge to his voice. “But the straits have never been more dire. If I’m here, talking to the guy who I know swore to never set foot on the battlefield again, that means we’re in last hope territory.”

“Things seemed like they were going well in Sydney,” Karkat replied. “I saw the footage.”

“Vriska Serket is a talented pilot with a flair for both bravado and the dramatic,” Dirk said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That cannon is both loose and rolling down a hill at ludicrous speeds. It isn’t just Sydney under attack either, it’s all up and down the Pacific Rim. Increased Kaiju attacks, just days apart, in Vladivostok, Lima, Seattle. They’re escalating faster than we can beat them back.”

Karkat looked across the room at the human and it struck him exactly how tired Dirk looked. Karkat was plagued with regular nightmares but even he looked well rested compared to Deputy Marshal Strider, who was visibly exhausted even through his inscrutable eyewear. “I didn’t know it was that bad,” he said, softening.

“It’s the end of the world, Karkat,” Dirk said, his tone indicating that he wasn’t exaggerating. “Do you wanna die here building a glorified band-aid, or do you wanna go down fighting?”

Karkat continued to stare at him, remembering when the two of them had first met, in a different spot along the Alaskan coast, the human looking so alien and strange to him as he’d dragged him from the wreckage and spoken to him in a language he couldn’t understand but with a tone that he could. Earth wasn’t Karkat’s original home, and he hadn’t stayed in one place since he’d arrived there, but he’d come to it a furious rebel mutant ready to burn everything the Condesce stood for to the ground before she’d take it as her own.

That was still in him somewhere, once he got past all the bullshit and the pain. He was still a resistance fighter. That was what this planet needed. Earth was a place for warriors, not construction workers.

He set his jaw.

“Fuck it,” he said. “I suck at welding anyway. Let’s go save the world.”


	2. Waking Up At The Start Of The End Of The World

_I think it turned ten o’clock but I don’t really know_  
_And I can’t remember caring for an hour or so_  
_Started crying and I couldn’t stop myself_  
_I started running but there’s nowhere to run to_  
_I sat down on the street took a look at myself_  
_Said where you going man you know the world is headed for hell_  
_Say your goodbyes if you’ve got someone you can say goodbye to_

_I believe the world is burning to the ground_  
_Oh well I guess we’re gonna find out_  
_Let’s see how far we’ve come_  
_Let’s see how far we’ve come_  
\-- From ‘How Far We’ve Come’ by Matchbox Twenty  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTWOAJJ9s1g))

__

Dave Strider woke up to the sound of his alarm clock and he resisted the urge to throw it against the wall. The digital readout flashed a combination of numbers that reported a time far too early for his taste, and he groaned, wiping his face with a hand. Four hours of shut-eye. Why couldn’t the Kaiju attack on a regular, diurnal schedule that allowed for healthy sleep patterns?

“Ugh,” he muttered, swinging his legs off of his bed and groping for his shades, putting them on despite his room still being pitch dark. “Why am I awake? Why the fuck is it already morning?” He shuffled across the room, mumbling curses under his breath as he found his worktable with his shins on his way to the lightswitch. “Five years living in the same damn room and every morning, without fucking fail, shins meet table. Gold medal for consistency, Strider. You are the winner, it is you.”

He flipped the switch on the wall and buzzing fluorescent lights blinked on overhead, making him wince. Bright as fuck, even through his aviators. Morning was merciless even when you lived in a windowless room fuck deep in an Earth defense installation. Once his eyes adjusted he sat down on the creaky rolling stool next to the bed and pushed himself over to the desk against the far wall, where his laptop sat among piles of Jaeger blueprints and broken sound equipment.

“Let’s see what’s on the docket for apocalypse: day infinity,” he muttered, booting up his beat up computer after shoving a few piles of documents and plans off to the side. “Who needs Dave Strider’s mad skills today?”

Being the Interspec Liaison for Restoration and Requisitions under the Deputy Marshal of the Hong Kong Shatterdome was a complex jack-of-all-trades kind of gig, and Dave had been expanding his list of trades since he’d first arrived at the complex at seventeen. Now he worked in everything from Jaeger restoration to cadet training, and if something was going down in the Interspecies Defense Program, he was among the first to know. This was evident as he pulled up the communications portal and caught up with everything he’d missed while he briefly paid a visit to slumberland. When he’d finally crashed the night before after watching the situation in Sydney go down up in LOCCENT (though 0300 hours local time didn’t really count as night anymore, he was gonna be real about that), he’d been able to sleep knowing _Law and Order_ was on its way back to the Shatterdome, another Kaiju having bit the fuck out of the dust.

Not without some damage though. He skimmed the reports before ensuring they’d been forwarded to the engineers, sighing with every listed incident. Most of them were standard wear and tear resulting from the unstoppable force of a behemoth tentacled monster clashing head on with a Jaeger posing as an immovable object, but if he had a dollar for every time he got sent a requisition order for replacement guns and unnecessary upgrades on _Law and Order_ he’d be swimming in money, Scrooge McDuck style.

A notification pinged on his laptop and he clicked it, anticipating the content. Only one person would be pestering him at this ungodly hour, and if he didn’t respond, she’d be banging on his door in minutes. He sighed, cracked his knuckles, and turned his attention to Pesterchum.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 0705 --

TT: Good morning Dave  
TG: sup rose  
TG: i hope you arent here to request any upgrades  
TG: you know that shit has to go through proper channels even if we shared a womb once  
TT: I assure you I would go through all the appropriate channels to requisition any upgrades to Rosemary, Dave. Honestly, I’m offended you would even think I would resort to nepotism in this matter. I am a Jaeger pilot with standards.  
TG: cool so whats up  
TT: I wanted to congratulate you on your latest simulator score. I saw it this morning as I was on my way to the weight room.  
TT: You should be proud, Dave. The drop/kill ratio you currently sport surpasses every listed pilot on record.  
TG: i’d be proud if it meant jack shit  
TG: woo hoo hell yes another notch on my completely imaginary simulated kill sheet of completely imaginary simulated dead kaiju  
TG: as opposed to yours which is both iron clad and actually based in reality  
TT: It is still an accomplishment worthy of praise.  
TG: great praise away  
TG: sing my every merit and build massive phallic monuments embellishing my masterful fucking achievements in virtual monster murder  
TG: or we can talk about literally anything else besides my being a glorified desk jockey  
TT: Very well.  
TT: Will you be in the mess hall anytime soon? John wanted me to relay to you that there are pancakes and apple juice.  
TG: well fuck me you should have led with that we could have avoided this awkward discussion of my unsatisfactory vocational opportunities  
TT: But you know that I relish the opportunities to delve into the darkest crevices of your psyche.  
TG: shit rose you really missed your calling  
TG: too bad the kaiju keep swimming up from the depths of the ocean primed for destroying the world while their evil alien overlord tries to enslave us  
TG: if we weren’t up to our tits in the apocalypse you could make a killing as a high-priced therapist  
TG: imagine that getting paid to pick apart your twin brothers psyche  
TG: instead of decimating skyscraper-sized tentacle monsters in a giant robot  
TT: I really am missing out, aren’t I?  
TG: lifes hard like that  
TG: if you beat me there tell john not to swap my juice for piss again  
TG: that was only funny the first two or three times he did it  
TT: I will relay your request for a urine-free beverage upon my arrival  
TT: See you in a bit

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 0717 --

Dave stepped away from his desk and rifled through the pile of recently washed clothes on his floor to locate clean fatigues, his mood darkening significantly after his conversation with his sister. The problem with being a jack-of-all-trades was that he wanted to be a master of one, and that one was completely ruled out as an option.

It wasn’t that it was hard to be a Jaeger pilot. It was a unique skillset, that was for certain, and it was even more unique in a program dedicated to studying and implementing the benefits of interspecies piloting, but that wasn’t the problem. His simulation scores weren’t the problem either. How could they be? As of yesterday he was at fifty-one drops and fifty-one kills. As Rose had said, a record surpassing that of any other pilot in the program.

He still wasn’t a Jaeger pilot though, not where it mattered. Simulations didn’t mean shit when he’d never set foot in an actual Jaeger except to supervise repairs and retrofits. So the learning curve wasn’t the problem, and neither was his aptitude. His neural scans were part of the problem, but he had to be Drift compatible with someone out there, just by the laws of probability. He pulled on his boots, huffing out a frustrated breath. The problem was the overbearing second in command of the facility, Deputy Marshal Dirk Strider, and his overprotective streak being focused heavily on his kid brother.

Twenty-two and still a kid according to the guy who called the shots. He had perfect simulation scores and nothing to show for it, stuck with piles of paperwork while his twin sister saved the world. He looked himself over in the mirror before he grabbed his jacket and headed for the mess. White-blonde hair in need of a cut, too-pale skin stark against his regulation blue fatigues, shades hiding the dark circles from too little sleep and a pair of fundamentally useless silver dog tags hanging from his neck. He sighed.

_Dave Strider, this is your life and you’re wasting it behind a desk._

He closed his door and headed toward the mess, shrugging on his jacket. The Shatterdome was always cold, the air piped in from outside conditioned to keep everything cool enough to avoid any kind of explosive reactions during upgrades and maintenance. Dave passed various engineering crews and technical teams as he walked, greeting them with a customary head-nod and a thumbs up unless they stopped him to talk or to give progress reports, which was often. By the time he’d crossed the maintenance bay he’d been given three different files with upgrade reports for the new Jaeger, signed off on five replacement parts for _Rosemary_ , and promised he’d requisition a rush order on a new specimen containment tank for the science team.

He passed under the giant numeric clock near the entrance to the launch bay and glanced up at it, noting the listed time grimly. Dirk had LOCCENT reset it after every Kaiju attack, and Dave knew the frequency of resets had everyone in a heightened state of activity. Around him the engineers carried replacement parts and shouted work orders across the cavernous main hall, everything humming with urgency. Dave surveyed it all with a familiar sense of determination. The Shatterdome was a well oiled machine under his watchful eye, everything working in perfect synchronicity across areas to keep the facility functioning as the last line of defense between the humans and the monstrous alien invaders from the deep.

Dave also felt an all-too familiar longing in the pit of his stomach as he passed the construction bay where the teams worked on the new Jaeger, still unnamed but constructed from pieces of the last remaining Mech from the Assault on the Breach, Miracle. He’d been overseeing construction of this new Jaeger for over a year, and one of the files he carried weighed heavy as a reminder that despite his training, dedication, and simulation scores, he was not one of the people who’d be considered as her co-pilot.

Dave found Rose sitting in her usual seat at the table near the back of the mess, a yellowing book open next to her tray that she surveyed as her companions chattered casually beside her. He felt his funk of resentment lift slightly at the sight of them, his twin sister looking almost serene with her blonde hair swept out of her face in a lavender headband that matched her eyes, her shoulders touching with the statuesque jade-blooded troll who was her co-pilot. Kanaya Maryam was close to seven feet, her long curved horns protruding from short black hair that framed her face, and she glowed, literally, in the grimy poorly-lit mess hall, her skin luminescent thanks to her status as a troll vampire, or rainbow drinker. Dave still remembered the look on Rose’s face the day the two of them had met and participated in the first Interspec Pilot Test. Love at first sight wasn’t something Dave had ever believed in, but whenever he saw them together, especially fighting together in _Rosemary_ , he could almost convince himself it was real.

“Dave!” He dragged himself out of his reminiscence and paid attention to John waving at him from his spot across from Rose and Kanaya. Dave’s best friend looked almost as tired as he did, dark circles ringing the blue eyes framed by thick glasses, but he was still cheerful, his grin prominently displaying his overbite. “I saved you some juice!”

Dave lifted his free hand to give John a thumbs up and went to grab a food tray and some coffee. Breakfast was always a xenocultural mishmash of dishes, the human things like eggs and pancakes as well as the congee and cold noodles more typical of the region lined up alongside troll grubloaf and brightly coloured sauces of dubious origin. He quickly constructed two egg sandwiches between pancakes and slapped a scoop of congee into a bowl before he filled a chipped mug up with oil-slick black coffee, shuffling back to the table to grab the empty seat beside John.

“Morning Dave!” John’s voice was aggressively cheerful despite his clear exhaustion. “How’d you sleep?”

“Shh,” Dave mumbled, shoving his files out of the way so he could make room for his breakfast. “No talking before coffee.”

“I concur with this statement,” Rose murmured, sipping her own mug of coffee as the corners of her mouth twitched up, she and Dave exchanging a look. “Coffee first, conversation later.”

“You two are no fun,” John said, pouting as he passed Dave the bottle of apple juice. “I haven’t slept since the attack and I’m fine!”

“You are manic,” Kanaya corrected, her voice smooth and sarcastic. “And fueled by those disgusting energy beverages Sollux encourages you to drink.”

“He’s my boss!” John protested, picking at his eggs. “If he gives me a can of weird alien caffeine, I’ve gotta drink it!”

“Your herd mentality truly is a testament to the survivability of the human race,” Rose said acidly as she turned a page of her book. “I shall cancel our scheduled doom forthwith.”

John stuck his tongue out at Rose before turning to Dave. “I can get you some if you wanna give it a try,” he said, grinning wide. Side by side the two of them could not have looked more different, John’s flyaway black hair and smooth brown skin a high contrast to Dave’s complexion, but they had bonded over their respective roles outside of cockpits at the behest of their authoritative guardians. “It’s like somebody crossed Faygo with Red Bull and flavored it with grub sauce.”

“I’ll pass,” Dave said, opening up the bottle of apple juice. “Anything you get from Captor’s gonna be both disgusting and illegal and my schedule for the day is booked without adding nonstop vomiting and filing a contraband report to my list.”

“I only threw up once,” John muttered, rolling his eyes. “And that’s hardly the worst thing Sollux has stashed in his room.”

Dave groaned. “John, please let me stay ignorant for once in my miserable life,” he said. “Ever since you started working with the LOCCENT team all I hear from you is the shitstorm of illegal crap our Chief Communications Officer keeps shipping in from Hong Kong. Like I’m not up to my ass in paperwork already.”

“I see you are in the sunniest of moods today, Dave,” Kanaya said, delicately taking a bite of her grubloaf. “Is everything alright?”

“Just peachy, Kanaya,” Dave sighed, turning his attention to the stack of files he’d brought with him and collected on his walk to the mess. “Another day, another stack of requisitions, repair orders, and incoming post-drop Serket-Pyrope bullshit.”

“Rose shared your recent simulator success with me earlier this morning,” Kanaya continued, causing Dave to glare at his sister. “You really should be proud, it is quite an accomplishment.”

“Wait, what happened?” John perked up, and Dave could feel his heart sink at his best friend’s enthusiasm. “You upped your score again?”

“A new Shatterdome record,” Kanaya said, deliberately ignoring Dave’s scowl. “Higher than any other reported score. Fifty-one drops, fifty-one kills.”

“Wow!” John’s eyes widened and he gave Dave a friendly thump on the back. “That’s definitely worth celebrating, great job man!”

Dave felt the bitterness curl in the pit of his stomach and took a drink of his juice to avoid flying off the handle. He shouldn’t have been surprised - Rose and Kanaya shared everything, whether it was through the Drift or through their obnoxiously healthy relationship - but he was still pissed off. It was like Rose was trying to orchestrate a confrontation between him and Dirk. He wouldn’t have put it past her, and he knew she was just trying to help, but the fact of the matter was that nothing he said or did would convince Dirk that he was ready to be a Ranger, and he might as well suck it up and focus on the job he actually had, not the one he wanted.

His comm beeped and he tapped his ear to answer it, grateful for the distraction. “Yep?”

“Jutht got word from the Deputy Marthhal,” Sollux Captor’s voice lisped in his ears. “He’th on hith way back with the new pilot, ETA 1100 hourth.”

“Thanks Sollux,” Dave said. “Ping me when they’re landing and I’ll head up to the top to meet ‘em.”

“Roger that,” Sollux replied.

“And hey, Captor,” Dave added. “Stop giving my best friend those jacked up energy drinks, he’s vibrating so hard I think the Kaiju can feel him on the other side of the Breach.”

“It keepth him productive,” Sollux’s voice was smug, causing Dave to roll his eyes. “It’th not my fault he rethpondth well to quethtionable thimulanth, Thtrider.”

“Just keep it legal, dipshit,” he said. “If his Dad finds out you gave him that garbage you’ll be out on your ass before you can clean the spit off your monitor.”

“The perkth of being indithpenthible are wide-reaching, D-Eth,” the troll replied, and Dave could hear the smirk in his voice. “Long ath John doethn’t die, I can do what I want.”

“Good for you,” he scowled. “I’ll just be over here dealing with the ramifications of your horseshit.”

“That’th what you do betht,” Sollux said. “That and taking your fruthtrationth about your career out on innothent bythtanderth. Congratth on the thimulation thcore by the way.”

Dave gave Rose another look, his sister studiously ignoring him and focusing on her breakfast. He knew the scores were public but seriously, did she get on the intercom and broadcast it to the entire Shatterdome? ‘Hey everyone, Dave Strider would be the best pilot in the history of the Jaeger program if he could just be allowed in an actual Jaeger, let’s laugh at his coddling’. “Just ping me when Dirk gets here, asshole,” he growled. “And don’t be surprised if there’s a delay in the next shipment of that honey you like so much.”

“You wouldn’t rithk my productivity even for the purpothe of thpite,” said Sollux. “But I’ll take it under advithement.”

“Smug tool.”

“Inthuferable brat.”

“Go french kiss a light socket.”

“Thuck my bone bulge and juggle my globeth, dickweed.”

“Keep me updated?”

“Alwayth do.”

“Later man.”

“Over and out.”

Dave’s comm went dead and he turned back to his companions, who all wore smirks.

“I assume you know it is unkind of you to continue to flirt with Sollux in that manner,” Kanaya said. “He is already confused enough about how humans function without quadrant-style relationships, your black solicitations will only serve to confuse him further.”

“It’s friendly banter between colleagues, not your alien foursquare relationship game,” Dave replied, his mouth full of sandwich. “Besides, I’m not into that.”

“What, trolls?” Kanaya’s elegant eyebrows quirked towards her hairline.

“Dudes,” Dave scowled. “Seriously, Rose, why is your girlfriend obsessed with my nonexistent dating life? We’re fuck deep in the apocalypse here and we’re talking about quadrants?”

“Don’t be rude to my matesprit, David,” his sister replied, closing her book. “Instead maybe you should share with us the news that Sollux had for you?”

“Stop calling me David,” he said, though his scowl lessened slightly. “And Dirk’s on his way back. With the new pilot.”

Dave’s three companions immediately abandoned their breakfasts and previous trains of thought to focus on his news.

“Holy shit, Dirk actually found him?” John said, his eyes shining. “That’s awesome! Where was he?”

“In Sitka, Alaska,” Dave nodded, pushing aside his barely touched breakfast tray to get out his files. “He was on the construction team working on the Wall of Life.”

“Interesting,” Rose mused. “Not the profession you would expect from a former Mech pilot who survived the Assault on the Breach.”

“There were not many of us who did survive the Breach, Rose,” Kanaya pointed out. “I cannot blame this pilot for wanting to distance himself from this way of life. Without the proper support it is… challenging.” Her voice softened and her hand instinctively found Rose’s on the table between their trays. Dave didn’t have to ask what that was about: Kanaya had lost her moirail during the Assault on the Breach, and the only co-pilot she’d trusted since had been Rose. Pilots that were dating, or matesprits as the trolls said, were more common in human teams than interspecies ones, but Rose and Kanaya made it work. Shit, they made it look effortless. Not a surprise there either. The trolls that had survived the Assault on the Breach were the toughest and most stubborn of the resistance, and each one of them was a force to be reckoned with in their own way.

“What do you know about this guy?” John asked, leaning over curiously to peek at Dave’s files.

“What don’t I know?” Dave sighed, flipping through the papers to the collection of basic information. “The files Dirk gave me are so detailed I half expected there to be a section on how this dude lost his virginity.”

“What is his name?” Kanaya was clearly also curious. “I did not know every member of the resistance personally, but by the time we attacked the Breach we were all at least aware of each other’s existence, regardless of our roles in the fight.”

“Karkat Vantas,” Dave turned the file around so Kanaya and Rose could see the attached image and the details. “Nearly fourteen sweeps old, original pilot of _Miracle_ in 2020. Assaulted the Breach with the front lines, lost his co-pilot off the Alaskan Coast.”

Rose peered at the image attached to the file, making a sound in the back of her throat. “Fascinating,” she murmured. “I was not aware that any mutant members of the hemospectrum were still alive.”

“I recall him,” Kanaya studied the picture, her brow furrowed. “We never participated in a drop together besides the Assault but he had a reputation among the resistance.”

“I’ve read about that,” Dave nodded, taking the file back so John could take a look at the image of the scowling troll with the mop of black hair and short nublike horns, his red eyes stark and unnerving against his grey skin. “Had a foul mouth and a chip on his shoulder, fought like he had something to prove with every drop.”

Kanaya’s lips quirked into a small smile. “I can confirm both of those things,” she said. “I am glad to hear he will be joining us. For all his emotional outbursts and reckless behaviors, he was a talented pilot. The resistance was fortunate to have him in the fight.”

“I presume you have studied his techniques and the neural scans and compiled a list of potential co-pilots?” Rose asked, her hand still clasped in Kanaya’s.

“That’s my job, isn’t it?” Dave said, tapping the file, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Got a collection of the Shatterdome’s finest and most Drift compatible cadets right here.”

Rose studied him as he refused to meet her eyes. He didn’t want to do this with her now, not when the new pilot, Vantas, was touching down in a matter of hours. He attempted to communicate with her through nonexistent psychic twin powers, willing her to just let it go.

“The finest?” she pressed. “And most Drift compatible?”

She wasn’t letting it go. Of course. “Who are currently deemed eligible to engage in combat by our supreme leaders,” Dave finished, his scowl deepening as he looked to her.

“I see,” Rose murmured, staring him down. “And your assessment of your own neural scans when considering the potential co-pilot candidates for Mister Vantas?”

“My own neural scans weren’t a factor,” he replied, meeting her gaze and glaring. “My presence in the database is for calibrating in the restoration program and using the simulator, not for pilot match-ups.”

“So you weren’t curious?” her gaze was steel, unmoving and tenacious. “You didn’t cross-reference every neural scan to determine the most suitable co-pilots? You weren’t exhaustively thorough in your search?”

“I did my job,” Dave felt like his stomach was full of writhing snakes. “Don’t question my capabilities, Lalonde.”

“So you did reference your own scan,” her face hinted at smug, and Dave bristled. “And your findings as to your Drift compatibility with the new pilot?”

“Are irrelevant,” Dave’s voice was icy. “Because I’m the Interspec Liaison for Restoration and Requisitions, not a fucking Ranger, Rose. Thanks for reminding me.”

“So you believe that you are not the best man for the job?” Rose’s eyebrows were raised in delicate incredulous arcs. “That you, as the man who spent the last month obsessively studying the fighting techniques and strategies of this pilot, are less suitable than the people whose names you pulled from the database of neural scans at the last possible moment?”

Dave was on his feet in an instant, his hands slamming down on the table so hard John jumped beside him. His voice was low but hard when he spoke, knife-sharp and full of rage. “If you have such an issue with the best man for the job being stuck on the ground, maybe you should take it up with our brother the Deputy Marshal, Ranger Lalonde.”

Rose hadn’t flinched at his movement, her demeanour characteristically calm, her hand still gently clasped in Kanaya’s. “As a pilot on the front line of this war, Officer Strider, I am simply invested in the Interspec program having the best and brightest where they belong to maximize our success. Our elder brother’s reasons for keeping you on the ground are his own, but as they have the potential to directly impact our abilities the next time a Kaiju exits the Breach and attacks the coast, I have a vested interest.” Her gaze softened, Dave noticing Kanaya giving her hand a squeeze. “In addition to this, I am invested in the wellbeing of my twin brother, whose skills as a pilot are unparalleled, his mental health notwithstanding. This new pilot is the perfect opportunity for you to take your rightful place among the Rangers, and I would hate for such a chance to be squandered because you chose to behave out of character and actually listen to Dirk.”

The two of them studied each other for a long moment, Rose’s cool violet-eyed gaze meeting Dave’s stony shades. Memories rose unbidden in his mind of his first neural scan upon arriving at the program: seventeen years old and crushed by the disappointment of the discovery that he wasn’t Drift compatible with his own twin sister. The nightmares he still had of the time before the Shatterdome, the violence and sounds of metal grinding against metal still seared into his brain. The arguments he and Dirk had almost weekly, sometimes daily, about his abilities and qualifications.

_“I’m the best pilot you have in the program!”_

_“On paper and in simulations, sure, but what happens when you have to share a mind with somebody else, Dave? What happens when all that trauma comes flooding back to you in perfect detail? How can you fight a Kaiju if you’re too busy fighting yourself?”_

He sighed, sitting back down, the tension at the table dissipating. “Fine,” he said, shuffling his files together. “I’ll talk to him. See what I can do. For the good of the program.”

She nodded lightly, lips curving into a smile. “Of course,” she said. “The good of the program.”

“Don’t worry Dave,” John gave his friend another pat on the back. “You know I’ve got your back, whether you’re on the ground with me or in a Jaeger.”

“Well, sure you do,” Dave gave John a tight smile, his anger slowly fading. “Who else is gonna help you rig the ventilation system with helium so the entirety of LOCCENT sounds like chipmunks?”

John laughed, clapping his hands. “It was SO PERFECT,” he said, joyous. “Hearing Sollux squeak out ‘prepare for neural handthake’ was a thing of beauty.”

“Fortunately for you it was only during a test,” Kanaya gave John a disapproving look that was betrayed by the mirth in her eyes. “I doubt it would have been as funny during an actual drop.”

“Which is why I did it during a test run,” John replied, sticking his tongue out at Kanaya.

“And the boss still took away your intranet privileges for a week,” Dave smirked. He definitely felt better now. “I’m going to look over these files one more time before Dirk gets here. Any last tips about the new pilot, Kanaya?”

The troll woman tipped her head back thoughtfully, her thumb stroking small circles along the edge of Rose’s hand. “He was abrasive,” she began, pondering. “But strong. Never afraid to voice his opinion. I feel he will be a welcome addition to the Interspec program.”

“Here’s hoping,” Dave said, flipping through his stack of papers, reviewing _Miracle_ ’s drop data idly. “Got my own reservations though. Pilots don’t just skip out on the program, not after years in the resistance battling the Fish Queen of Alien Hell, whether they lose their moirail or not. There’s more to this Vantas guy than I’ve got on paper.”

“People are impossible to quantify in data sets,” Rose murmured, returning to her book. “It is difficult to make an assessment when you only have part of the picture.”

“True,” Dave shrugged, his eyes falling on the pilot’s photo again. He wasn’t sure what he saw in those eyes, red and righteous. Perhaps fury, maybe determination, a thirst for justice and freedom. Exhaustion. It was five years old. A lot could change in five years. “Guess the rest of the assessment happens when he touches down. Then we’ll see what’s really going on.”

“Either way,” Rose continued, fixing Dave with another pointed look. “I suspect he will surprise you.”

Dave didn’t meet her gaze but gave her a nod, looking at the list of co-pilots and feeling the knot of bitter snakes writhe in his stomach once more. “Yeah, here’s hoping,” he said. “The way this war is going, what we need more than anything else are a few welcome surprises.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's chapter two! Tune in next week for the much-anticipated first meeting! 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr!](http://hexstuck.tumblr.com)


	3. Welcome To The New Age

_I’m waking up to ash and dust_  
_I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust_  
_I’m breathing in the chemicals_  
_I’m breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus_  
_This is it, the apocalypse_

_I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones_  
_Enough to make my systems blow_  
_Welcome to the new age, to the new age_  
_Welcome to the new age, to the new age_  
\-- From ‘Radioactive’ by Imagine Dragons  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO_WxYC34eM))

__

Karkat had never seen the Shatterdome before, all his knowledge of it coming from newsreels and reputation alone. The structure, located on the edge of Hong Kong Bay, was obscured by torrential rain and low clouds, but he could still make out its distinguishing features. Stark against the dreary morning sky, the Shatterdome towered over the coastline, concrete and stone illuminated by rows of running lights along the top of the dam-like area that faced out into the bay. Karkat could make out at least a half dozen alcoves along the side, each lit with beacons and crawling with engineering crews.

The lights of Hong Kong glowed just beyond the facility and Karkat found himself staring, his mouth slightly open. Sweeps on the edge of civilization had made him forget just how populous the human race truly was, and the coloured lights and smog were a jarring reminder, sharp to his gut, of how much danger humanity was really in. One horrorterror could take that city out with a few tentacles and some time, and if the attacks were increasing…

He shook off the spike of fear and focused back on Dirk, who was sitting across from him in the helicopter with an impassive expression on his face. He seemed to catch Karkat’s examination of the city and he jerked his head in a small nod to indicate that the troll’s instincts were correct: the city was densely populated and constantly under threat.

The helicopter touched down as the rain poured harder, almost skidding along the row of indicator lights and making Karkat’s stomach lurch. Sweeps of Mech training had given him the ability to hold onto his meals while airborne, but his instincts were rusty. He gulped in a few damp breaths of air as the technicians from the Shatterdome positioned the steps that led down from the chopper’s compartment, the frigid rain helping him focus on the task at hand instead of vomiting.

The concrete floor of the Shatterdome’s topmost level was slick with rain and oil that had dripped and spread from air-dropped cargo shipments. Karkat almost slipped as he stepped out of the chopper, steadying himself against the vehicle’s chassis and hoping nobody had noticed.

“Watch where you step,” Dirk said, dashing his hopes and making him scowl. “Rain makes the whole place more slick than a blackjack dealer.”

“Watch your own steps,” Karkat growled. “I’m fucking fine.”

“Whatever you say,” Dirk shrugged, turning towards the massive steel doors set against the mountainous landscape of distant Hong Kong, clearly looking for someone. “Be a damn shame if you broke your neck before we could ever get you in a Jaeger.”

Karkat followed his gaze and saw someone approaching them, carrying a massive black umbrella. He noticed Dirk’s demeanour shift almost imperceptibly, his stance becoming a little less formal and his face less severe.

The umbrella tilted up slightly as they approached and Karkat was able to get a better look at the human coming to meet them. He was average height for his species, with a messy swirl of slightly damp blonde hair. His skin was ghost-pale as opposed to Dirk’s light brown, and he held a stack of files against his regulation fatigues instead of any military paraphernalia, but Karkat could see the resemblance between this human and the Deputy Marshal. They even both wore dark glasses, though this guy’s shades were rounded and curved as opposed to Dirk’s sharp pointed eyewear.

He looked like an insufferable prick. Karkat took an instant dislike to him.

“Karkat Vantas, this is Dave Strider,” Dirk said, joining the young human under the umbrella and stepping to one side so Karkat could do the same. “One of the brightest minds on the Interspec team. He’s in charge of the Alternian Restoration Project, and he hand-picked your co-pilot candidates.”

“Strider?” Karkat asked, glancing between the two of them, an eyebrow raised. He knew humans were more aware of their ancestors than trolls, but he was unsure of the particular genetic ties the two of them shared.

“My brother,” Dirk supplied, noticing Karkat’s confusion.

“Sup,” the younger Strider, Dave, said, his voice not unlike Dirk’s in its tone and cadence. “Thought you’d be taller.”

Karkat bristled immediately, glaring at the young human, whose face remained mostly impassive, pale lips curved up in a slight smirk. Insufferable prick status was thoroughly confirmed then. “Is that fucking right?” he growled. “You’re the one in charge of restoration? Thought you’d be older.”

The younger Strider’s lips lost their smirk, much to Karkat’s satisfaction. “I’m twenty-two,” he said, his tone biting. “And a prodigy in my field.”

Karkat snorted, looking to Dirk for confirmation. “You call him that?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Dirk replied, smirking at his brother. “But Dave’s the best at what he does. If he weren’t, I wouldn’t have him on the ground crew.”

Karkat saw Dave’s expression twinge for a brief moment, then return back to smug neutrality before he spoke again. “Damn straight, homes,” he said. “‘Scuse me, _Deputy Marshal_ homes.”

“Always the comedian,” Dirk said, setting off at a brisk pace towards the doors, causing Karkat and Dave to scramble to follow, jostling each other and swearing quietly. “Come on Mister Vantas, Dave will give you a tour of the facility and show you to your Jaeger. After that we can get you settled and this party started.”

Karkat huffed out a sigh and scowled at Dave. The human was still smirking, his expression only partially readable with those stupid shades on his face. If this douche was in charge of his co-pilot candidates, he wasn’t holding his breath.

The three of them stepped out of the rain as the massive steel doors swung open, creaking on ancient hinges. Beyond the entrance Karkat could see hordes of people milling around, engineers and technicians all frantically manning their stations, clearly prepping for incoming repairs. The inherent familiarity of it all, the smell of rust and sea water permeating the Shatterdome’s interior, slammed Karkat back to the memory of the last time he’d walked into a Jaeger station, helmet tucked under his arm as he traded insults back and forth with Gamzee.

“Out of the way! Out of the way!” Karkat heard shouting behind him and he turned, coming immediately face-to-chest with a tall seadweller troll carrying a handful of printouts, closely followed by a human woman dragging an oddly-shaped tank full of fluorescent liquid and suspicious dark shapes. “Move!” the troll yelled, his accent making the ‘v’ in the word sound more like a ‘w’, and Karkat stepped to the side with a growl as the two of them charged ahead of them through a pair of sliding doors that led to an elevator.

“What shenanigans do they have going on this time?” Dave muttered, shaking his head.

“Anyone’s guess,” Dirk said, picking up the pace a little to reach the doors. “Hold the elevator!”

Karkat watched as the human woman lurched forward to hold open the sliding doors while the seadweller berated her in a series of low-pitched whispers, which she ignored. “C’mon in, brosefs!” she yelled, a distinct slur in her voice. “There’s plenty o’room!”

The three of them entered the elevator, which groaned slightly under the shifting weight. The glowing tank was flush against the back wall, and the human woman leaned against it, occasionally tapping the glass. Squinting through the luminescent liquid, Karkat could make out the distinct shape of an oversized brain.

The woman noticed his gaze and grinned up at him, her face alight with excitement and framed by blonde hair the same colour as Dirk’s. Her eyes were an unusual colour, dusky pink, and they crinkled at the corners when she smiled. “Hiya,” she said. “Ever seen a Kaiju brain before?”

Karkat blinked, taken aback. She wore a grimy lab coat that had rolled up sleeves, displaying a colourful collection of tattoos against her tanned skin. “Never in a tank,” he said after briefly considering the question.

“Awesome,” the woman said, giggling and making the tall seadweller sigh audibly behind her, his arms still full of what looked like maps. “Dirky, you gonna introduce me?”

Dirk let out what Karkat could only describe as a grunt of disapproval and nodded. “Karkat Vantas, meet the heads of our research division, Doctors Lalonde and Ampora.”

“Call me Roxy,” the blonde woman winked up at him, offering him a hand to shake. “Nobody calls me doctor.”

“That’s because you are aggressively unprofessional, Doctor Lalonde,” the seadweller, Ampora, hissed from his spot beside the tank as Karkat shook her hand.

“Oh chill the glub out, Eridan,” Roxy said, giving the troll a shove and causing him to drop several rolls of paper. “I can be unprofessional around my two ‘lil bros.”

“You will address me as Doctor Ampora!” he sputtered as he struggled to keep all of his documents in hand. “Honestly, I have five sweeps of invaluable experience as a scientist and decorated member of the Alternian Resistance movement, and for you to so flagrantly disrespect me at every turn-”

“Glub fucking damnit you never shut up do you?” Roxy retorted. “How’m I supposed to get any work done with you blatherin’ in my ears?” She leaned over towards Karkat, giving him another clearly inebriated grin as she held up her left arm, displaying a brightly coloured tentacled horrorterror tattoo. “Whaddaya think of this?”

Karkat’s eyebrows went up as he blinked at the arm she brandished in front of him, looking at the cartoonish monstrosity inked into her skin. “Is that Hammertime?”

“What, this lil’ Kaiju here? Bet your sweet ass,” she grinned, moving her arm closer to her own face so she could admire it herself. “One of the biggest Cat 3 horrorterrors on record.”

“I remember,” Karkat said. “Gamzee and I took him down just after we came through the Breach.”

“I saw the footage of that!” Roxy was practically bouncing. “That guy lifted Miracle out of the water like she was nothing. He was twenty five hundred tons of awesome!”

Karkat blinked, watching as Roxy’s brain caught up to her mouth, and she grimaced, glancing around nervously at the others. “Or, y’know, awful,” she managed, finally putting her arm down. “Yeah, just… fuckin’ awful.”

“You’ll have to forgive her, Ranger Vantas,” Eridan sneered, having recovered all of his documents. “She’s an implacable Kaiju groupie, absolutely loves them.”

“Hey,” Roxy snapped, a difficult feat when intoxicated. “I don’t love them, I study them, there’s a difference, and if we ever wanna have a hope in hell of finally beating ‘em, we gotta get up close and personal and pick ‘em apart, see what makes ‘em tick!”

Karkat crossed his arms, adjusting his bag as he gave Roxy a knowing look. “Trust me,” he said, his voice a low grumble. “You wouldn’t wanna get up close and personal with a horrorterror. Take it from someone who knows.”

Behind him Karkat heard Dave snort, and he felt his hackles rise at the sound. What the fuck did he think was so funny? Roxy looked slightly crestfallen, but whatever she had been imbibing appeared to be keeping her spirits comfortably afloat, and as she and Eridan exited the elevator ahead of them, she gave him a cheery wave as she stumbled her way through the crowds of people, shoving her brain in a tank ahead of her.

“Well,” Karkat said as he stepped out of the elevator, watching the scientists walk away. “She’s shithive maggots.”

This time Dirk snorted, laughing. “That’s our Rox,” he said. “Mad genius alcoholic.”

“And she really is your human sister?” Karkat asked. He could see the resemblance.

“Kaiju hunting’s a bit of a family affair here at the Shatterdome,” Dave said, idly flipping through one of his files. “My twin sister’s here too.”

“What does she do?” Karkat snarked. “Clean fish tanks?”

“She’s one of our Interspec pilots actually,” Dirk supplied, leading the two of them down the long corridor that bustled with engineers and maintenance crews. “She jockeys for _Rosemary_.”

“Oh,” Karkat felt a little bad about what he’d blurted out previously. Even with his passionate campaign of avoidance when it came to all things Jaeger over the last two and a half sweeps, he’d been aware of Rosemary’s success against numerous horrorterror attacks since the Interspec program gained traction. “I’ve seen them fight. Best team you have here.”

“So far,” Dave muttered, shuffling his files around again. “Our hope in bringing you on is to give her some competition.”

“I wasn’t aware that defending the world from horrorterrors was competitive,” Karkat growled, feeling his hackles rise again. Even Dave’s voice was annoying him, he wasn’t sure if it was lack of sleep or just the fact that this guy’s laid back tone seemed to grate on his nerves. This was the end of the world they were talking about here, and between his rude tour guide and the inebriated scientist, he wondered if anyone was taking this situation seriously.

“Keeps everyone focused,” Dirk shrugged as they crossed through a low archway and passed a row of medical bays. “The pilots all get along for the most part, but tracking the statistics tends to motivate the Rangers to keep pushing for perfect ratios.”

Karkat nodded as he absently looked through the glass windows at the infirmary, where humans and trolls were bustling around treating minor wounds and running inventory. Up until his final mission, he and Gamzee had held that perfect ratio of a kill for every drop. It was a tough status to maintain, but after sweeps of working in sync the two of them had been practically unstoppable. “Any of the teams here at Interspec have a perfect ratio?”

“Only in simulations,” Dirk replied. “But our records are still high. Everyone at Interspec’s got a lot on the line fighting with us here, and they take their jobs seriously.”

A pair of sliding doors to their left opened with a pneumatic hiss and a young troll in a wheelchair approached, his horns some of the widest Karkat had ever seen on a bronzeblood. He looked somewhat familiar. “Hey Officer Strider,” the troll called out, rolling his way over to Dave as the three of them paused to meet him. “Did you, uhh, requisition those IVs for me? We’re running low and Ranger Pyrope’s coming back with a bad case of dehydration.”

Karkat squinted at the troll, his eyes narrowing as he shuffled through his memories of his resistance days. “Tavros?” he asked. “Tavros Nitram?”

“That’s me,” the wheelchair bound troll said, giving him a smile. “You’re Ranger Vantas, right?”

“Guilty as charged,” Karkat said as Tavros wheeled forward and held out his hand, which he shook. “I think you treated a broken rib of mine back in the resistance camp a few sweeps ago.”

“That was probably me,” Tavros grinned, his eyes crinkling up. “After the Assault I started working with Interspec, I’m an RN under Doctor Crocker.”

“The last time I saw you, I think you were…” Karkat fell silent, unsure how to address the trunkbeast in the room.

“Taller?” Tavros’s grin remained. “Probably. Got a spinal injury during the Assault on the Breach. I’ll never walk again, but I made it through to Earth, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Sorry to hear that, man,” Karkat murmured, instantly feeling awkward. It was easy to forget how few trolls had survived the Assault on the Breach at all, let alone with minimal lasting injury.

“It’s all good, bro,” Tavros backed his chair up a bit so he could face Dave. “IV requisition?”

“Boom,” Dave handed him a file. “When you get back from supply, tell Jane she’s down two on the prank war.”

“Really?” Tavros looked shocked. “What happened this time?”

“Egbert got me good after I finished up in the simulator yesterday,” Dave shuffled his files again. “There were pies involved.”

“I’ll pass along the news,” Tavros grinned, heading down the hall with the papers in his lap. “Good meeting you again, Vantas. Hopefully I won’t see too much of you.”

“I’ll come with you, Tav,” Dirk said, stepping to one side and following the troll. “Got my own requisitions to file. You good showing Karkat around the rest of the facility, Dave?”

“It’s my job, isn’t it?” the human had a lopsided grin on his face. “He’ll be in good hands.”

“Cool,” Dirk gave them a thumbs up. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Later,” Dave returned the thumbs up and watched as Deputy Marshal Strider headed down the hall beside the wheelchair-bound Tavros Nitram. He turned back to Karkat, his expression still maintaining that air of smugness that seemed to be a constant aspect of his demeanour. “So, ready to see the rest of the Shatterdome, Ranger Vantas?”

“It’s just Karkat,” he glared at the human. “Not big on formal bullshit.”

“Is that right?” Dave’s eyebrows quirked as the two of them resumed walking down the hall. “Guessing you’re a fan of nicknames then?”

“Excuse me?” his own eyebrows went up. What the fuck was he getting at?

Dave’s grin upgraded from lopsided to shit-eating. “Nicknames,” he said again. “The quintessential informal mode of address. You got something your friends call you or is it all Karkat all the time for you?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Karkat snapped, shifting his bag to a different spot on his shoulder.

“Karkat’s just so stiff and formal-sounding,” Dave continued, shuffling his files again. “Almost as formal as ‘Ranger Vantas’, I mean, there’s gotta be a way to cut that down a couple size categories.”

“It’s a name, not a horrorterror,” Karkat growled. “So just fucking call me Karkat and get on with the fucking tour.”

Dave laughed, shaking his head. “They really weren’t kidding about you,” he said. “That mouth’s so dirty I think it’s a crackhouse in Texas.”

“Oh fuck you,” he shot back. “I use words appropriate for the situation, like my supposed tour guide being full of shit and not actually showing me a gogdamn thing in this place!”

“All right, all right,” Dave held his free hand up in mock surrender, then used it to point up ahead of them. “Here’s something I can show you.”

Karkat looked in the direction Dave was pointing and he found himself staring across a cavernous atrium towards a row of digitized numbers labeled days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Currently the number was set low, displaying fourteen hours and thirty-six minutes, with the seconds counter slowly ticking upwards.

“So you have a clock to keep track of how long it’s been since the last shitstorm?” Karkat asked, watching the gently clicking numbers.

“Pretty much,” Dave nodded, stepping to one side to avoid an engineer pushing a dolly covered in spare parts through the atrium. “The war clock resets after every attack, Dirk sees it as another way of keeping everybody focused.”

Karkat grunted, glancing upward as they passed under the numbers. Their steady progression upward was slightly unnerving, especially knowing the impetus for their movement. “Seems pretty fucking grim,” he commented, following Dave out of the atrium and down another poorly-lit corridor.

“Feels that way most of the time,” Dave said over his shoulder, shrugging. “It used to just be kinda cool, an ‘x days since our last nonsense’ meme we could refer to in briefings. That was back when there were weeks between attacks.”

“How much time between the Sydney attack and the one before?” Karkat was almost afraid to ask.

“Six days, twenty hours, six minutes, fourteen seconds,” Dave rattled off, almost without thinking. Karkat’s eyebrows shot up again, causing that insufferable smirk to return to the human’s face. “What? I’m good at my job.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said. “Where are we going next?”

“Maintenance bays,” Dave replied, slipping his files under his arm and picking up the pace, Karkat having to jog a bit to keep up. “You’ve seen the Jaegers on the newsreels, now you get the up close and personal experience.”

“I’ve been in Mechs before you know,” Karkat grumbled, squinting as a series of red lights flashed up ahead where the corridor opened up. “I know a thing or two about being up close and personal.”

Dave paused, flashing Karkat teeth as his grin widened. “Not like this, man,” he said, gesturing ahead of them. “Trust me, you’ve never been around a Mech like this.”

The lights faded and Karkat finally got a look at the cavernous room beyond the corridor. He’d been in Mech facilities before, but there was something different about the Hong Kong Shatterdome, something that instilled a feeling he could only describe as reverence in his chest. Sweeps of roaming and existing nomadically in Earth had made him forget just how right he felt in places like this.

The maintenance bay hummed with activity, engineers and scientists scurrying over scaffolding like ants as they ran tests and carried out repair orders. The air was filled with the scent of metal and oil, and echoes of clanging machinery and shouts bounced across the vaulted dome ceiling. Karkat could see water dripping from stacks of recently cleaned parts, electricity crackling off of loose wires, and for the first time in sweeps, he almost felt at home.

“Hell of a sight, isn’t it?” Dave said, standing beside him, his smirk replaced with an expression of pride. “This is the heart of the Interspecies Defense Project, the last hope for what’s left of humans and trolls on planet Earth. Talking heads on the newsreels always jizz their pants over a Jaeger in action but this…” he trailed off and swept his hand from left to right in front of them, like he was presenting a work of art. “This is what it’s all about.”

The two of them stood side by side for a moment, watching the maelstrom of mechanical activity orchestrated by the engineering crews, Karkat unable to keep his mind away from words like ‘symphony’ and ‘harmony’ as he stared. Eventually Dave shuffled his files, clearing his throat as he did so, and jerked his head towards a flight of metal stairs to their right. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll introduce you.”

“To whom?”

Dave grinned again. “To the Jaegers.”

The two of them descended the stairs at a pace that allowed Karkat to take in the full sight of the nearest Jaeger, which became more visible as they made their way deeper into the bowels of the maintenance bay. He let out a low whistle, his eyes widening as he recognized the gigantic construct that loomed before them.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Dave proceeded along a steel walkway while shading his eyes with a hand, bright sparks flying from the instruments being used to conduct repairs along the edge of the Jaeger’s helmet. “Double titanium core, no alloys, fifty diesel engines per muscle strand.”

“ _Rosemary_ ,” Karkat breathed, unable to keep the awe from his tone. The Jaeger was impressive enough on newsreels, but the sight of her in person truly emphasized the majesty of her design, her bright plating and the high energy band across her helmet making her actually glow against the dark criss-crossed scaffolding.

“My sister’s baby,” Dave said, the proud smile on his face again. “We just outfitted her with the new spikes along the chassis.” He pointed to the rows of translucent spines along the Jaeger’s shoulder plating, which glowed with an almost ethereal energy. “Laser cannons, the lot of them, and they’re in magnetized housing for maximum radial movement. Detachable too, they can grab a couple of them and swing them around as actual weapons and shit. Rose calls them her wands.”

Karkat snorted, feeling the corners of his mouth turn up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually smiled. “Makes sense,” he said. “I’ve seen her in action and that shit really does look like magic.”

“Sometimes I think it is,” Dave nodded. “Everything about _Rosemary_ feels kinda magical though, gotta be real with you. When Rose volunteered for the Interspecies test I think we all still kinda expected the entire program to crash and burn. How could humans access the neural Drift at all? Shit, never mind the mere concept of Drifting with an alien species. That shit was all sci fi movie space odyssey fuckery, not something that could actually happen.”

Karkat snorted again. “Wish it had been as much of a novelty for us,” he said. “The sci fi shit I mean. That’s old news. Humans and trolls Drifting together is pretty fucking weird though.”

“That’s what I said,” Dave agreed, shuffling his files again. It seemed to be more of a nervous tic than anything. “But Dirk was determined to make it happen, even if his own sister was going to be the guinea pig. It worked out though.” He nodded towards the boarding platform a few stories down and Karkat followed his gaze. A blonde human with the same complexion as Dave stood next to a tall troll woman, both of them fully suited up and holding helmets as they spoke to the engineering team. He was struck by how gracefully the two of them moved, their limbs shifting in sync as they reviewed plans for what looked like a console retrofit.

It had been a long time since he’d been around people who were obviously Drift compatible, and he felt a hollow pang in his stomach as they passed the platform, remembering the way he and Gamzee would spar together before a drop, the way they’d finish each other’s sentences and laugh at each other’s stupid jokes, the way he’d fly off the handle at the slightest thing and Gamzee would know exactly how to calm him down.

Karkat shook his head, shoving his dead moirail out of his mind for what he was sure wouldn’t be the last time that day, and tried to focus. He hoped Dave hadn’t noticed him spacing out.

“Y’alright man?”

Fuck. Karkat sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Tired. Being back around Mechs is a lot. Whatever. Tell me about your sister’s co-pilot.”

Dave raised an eyebrow, but seemed willing to let it go. “Kanaya Maryam,” he said, pointing down towards the two pilots. “Jade blood. Originally counted among the dead after the final push of the Assault on the Breach, but when they fished her out of the water she woke up. Tried to drain the blood of the guy who found her.”

Karkat’s mouth dropped open. “She’s a rainbow drinker?”

“Yep,” Dave chuckled. “My sister’s co-pilot’s an honest to fuck vampire. She’s terrifying, but after two years jockeying with Rose, she’s part of the family. A really tall alien part of the family who could rip my throat out without a second thought, but still family.”

Karkat closed his mouth, turning away from the boarding platform and adjusting his bag on his shoulder. “I’ve seen them in combat,” he said, swallowing. “Impressive shit.”

“They make the whole program look good,” Dave agreed, picking up the pace a bit and leaving _Rosemary_ and her pilots behind them to approach another repair bay. “So do these guys.”

Dave pointed again and Karkat looked in the indicated direction as they rounded a corner on the walkway, which clearly led to the upper tier of the maintenance bay. A pair of trolls sparred on mats beside a repair station for the imposing olive and indigo-chromed Jaeger just behind them. The smaller of the two was still at least six and a half feet tall, and she wore a blue hat with cat ears on it that only stayed on her head as she ducked and weaved because it was caught on her horns. Her companion hulked over her, easily hitting eight feet, and his muscles positively rippled as he followed her movements, blocking and parrying with next to no effort. Watching them, Karkat couldn’t help but almost mistake their fight for an elaborately choreographed dance.

“We spent two years retrofitting and upgrading to get ready for these two,” Dave said, raising a hand to wave at the two trolls, the smaller one waving back before leaping up and getting the larger one in a headlock. “He was an engineer back on Alternia and she was a slave. They stole a Mech together, led the charge during the Assault, and when the regular division didn’t want them due to their lack of formal training, we took them on.”

Karkat couldn’t help but stare as they passed the two trolls, his mind racing. “Wait,” he tried to parse Dave’s story. “That’s who that is?”

“Heard of ‘em?” Dave kept walking, but slowed down a little to give Karkat a chance to catch up.

“Are you fucking kidding?” Karkat shook his head in disbelief. “Everyone in the resistance knew about them. They have the strongest neural handshake ever recorded, their moirallegiance is the stuff of fucking legends!”

“I can confirm that,” Dave nodded, chuckling as the smaller troll grabbed the larger and suplexed him onto the mat. “I admit I’m still fuzzy on how your alien romance grid works, but knowing Nepeta and Equius made that pale shit finally make sense to me.”

Karkat glanced behind them as they walked away, watching the smaller Nepeta help the mountainous troll named Equius back to his feet, all smiles. “I thought they died during the Assault.”

“Their mech went down in flames but they survived,” Dave supplied. “Now they pilot _Pounce_ , the last Active Mark 3 Jaeger.” He pointed to the Jaeger, now more clearly visible as they approached, and Karkat found himself staring again as Dave talked. “Titanium cored powerhouse, almost entirely melee focused. The claws are retractable and I’ve seen them slice a Cat 3 in half.”

Karkat took in the sight of the machine, its visor narrowed to a point and shining in the flickering lights of the dome. “Why’d they name her _Pounce_?”

Dave grinned, shuffling his files again. “Because when she’s in a fight, she’ll leap her shit up high in the air and slam down on a Kaiju like he’s stuffed with catnip. It’s a hell of a sight.”

Karkat turned back one last time to see the pilots, Equius and Nepeta, running around the perimeter of the training mat, the smaller troll sitting comfortably on the taller one’s shoulders. There was that pang in his chest again, that loneliness that seemed to flare whenever he saw a relationship that even partially resembled what he’d lost.

“Impressive,” he finally croaked out, doing his best to focus.

“All of it is,” Dave agreed. “This place was at least twenty percent cooler in its heyday though. We used to have thirty Jaegers lined up in this bay. We’ve got five left.” He gestured to a fork in the walkway they followed and led Karkat to the left. “We keep this next one over in the double-bay,” he said. “She’s kind of a beast.”

Karkat followed his tour guide curiously, eager to see which Jaeger he meant. He couldn’t remember the names of all of the Interspec mechs, and the only ones he’d ever watched in action were _Rosemary_ and the one he’d seen defending Sydney in the newsreels that morning.

“When your resistance crew came through the Breach the first Alternian Mech we saw was being piloted solo,” Dave said, leading Karkat along the walkway and pointing again. “Nearly blew out all her tech doing it, we spent three years making retrofits, but what’s left is _Surrender Dorothy_ , a remix of the last of the Alternian Mark 1s and the first of the human Jaegers.”

Karkat couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping as the Jaeger came into view, both familiar and strange at once. He recognized the bright fuschia plating patterning the sides, but not the form, which was massive and chrome with obsidian black underpanels and glowing green neon lights. “Piloted solo,” he murmured, a memory stirring. “The Heiress.”

“She’s one hell of a pilot,” Dave said, leading them past rickety scaffolding towards the repair hub. “Stole the Condesce’s personal Mech and jockeyed through the Breach all on her lonesome, blew out the neural relays and almost had an aneurysm, but she led the charge, and negotiated the terms of alliance once she could talk again.” He pointed again to indicate a pair of fatigue-wearing figures walking towards them, a human and a troll. “We didn’t think she’d ever set foot in a Mech again, but all it took was the right co-pilot.”

Karkat swallowed, bloodpusher suddenly in his throat as he recognized the troll woman, who was close to nine feet and bore an uncanny resemblance to the evil fish queen he’d rebelled against since he’d been old enough to talk. Her eyes were kind, however, and she paused in her animated conversation with her companion to greet them.

“Good morning Dave!” her voice sounded like bubbles, sparkling and full of life. “How are you?”

“Just dandy, Feferi,” Dave said, shuffling his files again and gesturing to Karkat. “Showing our newest pilot around the place before we put him to work. Karkat, this is Feferi Peixes, heiress to the Alternian empire and Interspec Jaeger pilot.”

“It’s so nice to finally meet you!” The tall troll woman smiled down at Karkat, her eyes meeting his with an unwavering sense of friendship. “I remember you actually!”

Karkat’s eyes widened. “Y… you do?”

“Of course I do!” Her smile was infectious. “You rode through the Breach with us. Jockeyed for _Miracle_ , right?”

“Yeah,” Karkat nodded, kicking himself for his idiocy. Of course the Heiress had heard of him, it wasn’t every day you had a mutant-blood doing anything other than dying on Alternia.

“You were an incredible team,” Feferi continued, nodding enthusiastically. “I was in the schoolfeed with Gamzee back when we were wigglers. He always spoke highly of you when he and I talked.”

Karkat felt his heart drop again and he resisted the urge to visibly flinch at the sound of his moirail’s name. “All lies,” he managed to choke out. “There’s never been anything high about me, Heiress.”

“Oh glub,” she waved one hand and held out the other to shake. “No need for formalities, especially not if we’re gonna be going out to fight horrorterrors together, just call me Feferi.”

Karkat took her hand, shaking gently and trying not to be awed by how her hand dwarfed his. It felt somewhat historic. Here he was, a troll so low he wasn’t even on the hemocaste, shaking hands with this woman, the heiress apparent to the entire empire with royal blood in her veins. He half-wished someone would take a picture.

There was a flash beside him and he instantly changed his mind, scowling as Dave tucked his phone away with a grin. “I can see the headline,” he smirked. “‘Hemocaste abolished as Heiress shakes hands with mutant: Condesce flips her fucking shit’.”

“I’m not here for a publicity stunt, asshole,” Karkat growled, letting go of Feferi’s hand. “I’m here to fight.”

“And you will,” Dave held up a hand defensively. “Alongside these fine ladies.” He gestured to the young human woman who’d been silently observing their exchange, and Karkat finally had a chance to look her over. She was maybe a few inches taller than Dave, and her black hair hung down in a wild tangle to her waist. She had glasses on that framed her face, a slight overbite, and she held a leash that was connected to a large white barkbeast, who sat obediently beside her and wagged his tail. “Meet the only human who can Drift with troll royalty: Jade Harley.”

“Probably not the only human,” the girl said, giggling and holding out a hand. “But I was in the right place at the right time. It’s nice to meet you Karkat.”

“You too,” Karkat mumbled, shaking her hand and eyeing the animal suspiciously. “Being able to Drift with the H- Feferi is a big fucking deal.”

“So everyone tells me,” her jovial smile remained. “We’re a great team though.”

“I’ll say,” Feferi smiled, resting a hand on Jade’s shoulder. “Couldn’t imagine piloting _Surrender Dorothy_ with anyone else.”

“And we couldn’t imagine her without you,” Dave said, kneeling down to give the barkbeast a scratch under the chin. It responded by licking his face, drenching his shades in spit, and Karkat found himself smirking as the human recoiled, sputtering. “Shit jegus, Bec, why?!”

“He just missed you,” Jade giggled again. “You’re always working, he never sees you anymore.”

“He’s a slobbering devilbeast,” Dave grumbled, wiping at his glasses with his sleeve, still not removing them. “But I get the hint. Bring him by LOCCENT next time there’s a drop and he can watch the show with us.”

“Will do,” Jade grinned. “We’re going to the simulator, see you later?”

“We’ll be around,” Dave nodded, setting off again and indicating Karkat should follow. “Catch you later.”

Jade and Feferi left them, resuming their conversation, as the barkbeast, Bec, yapped at them enthusiastically and strained on his leash. Dave led Karkat past the gargantuan shadow of _Surrender Dorothy_ and across another empty bay before they spoke again.

“So, what’s Jade’s story?” Karkat asked. “How does a human end up figuring out she’s Drift compatible with the Heiress of an alien empire?”

“A happy accident and some fucked up shenanigans,” Dave said, shrugging. “After the breach everyone figured Feferi would take a backseat in the resistance, maybe even just become a figurehead and let humanity do the dirty work, but she was hellbent on staying on the front lines to fight for her people.”

Karkat nodded, shifting his bag again. “I remember that,” he said. He’d seen the newsreel briefly during his mandatory break one day. It had been one of those rare moments in his life where he’d been actually proud to be a troll. “They didn’t think she could pilot again.”

“The Jaeger we constructed was unstable with all the the experimental tech we jammed into her,” Dave said, flicking through one of his files. “Combat in it was a risk, even for Drift compatible candidates, and nobody thought a human could manage it.” He smiled, the expression more genuine than the smirk he’d been carrying around since Karkat had met him. “We’d underestimated Jade.”

“What makes her different?”

Dave shrugged. “Beats the fuck outta me. The head of the program, Marshal Egbert, adopted her when one of the human Jaeger teams picked her up after a Kaiju attack. Middle of the Pacific, on a dinky little island, nobody around for miles but that dog. Raised her alongside his own son, here in the Shatterdome. When I met her she was a quiet antisocial girl who spent more time with Bec than anyone else in the program. I figured she’d end up working in records or something, not swinging a trident around in a volatile Mech.”

“But now she’s a pilot?”

“A damn good one too,” Dave confirmed. “Relentless, tenacious, optimistic, and she and Feferi Drift like they were born to mentally drive an unstable metal monstrosity together. _Surrender Dorothy_ doesn’t usually go out unless the straits are dire, but when she does, she cleans house.”

Karkat nodded, then turned his head at the sound of a loud grinding noise and strings of Alternian curse-words coming from the lowest level of the maintenance bay. “What the fuck?”

Dave glanced over the rail towards the source of the commotion and made a sound Karkat could only describe as an exasperated grunt. “Oh,” he said. “That. Our last team’s back from Sydney, I think you’ve heard of them.”

Karkat looked across the vast expanse of the maintenance bay and made out the shadow of another Jaeger rolling on conveyors towards an open alcove. Her chrome plating was drenched in seawater and unidentifiable alien organs, and the right arm was hanging at a precarious angle, still clutching its sword-cane in a death grip. The telltale red visor over the helmet was cracked, but still looked imposing in the flickering lights of the Shatterdome, and Karkat blew out a breath as he studied it, nodding. _“Law and Order_.”

“The very same,” Dave tucked his files under his arm. Karkat wondered if he was always so fidgety. “Fresh off the boat from Sydney, in all her fucked up glory.”

“And the yelling?”

Dave hissed out a sigh and pointed a ways in front of the Jaeger, and Karkat peered over the rail to see two tall trolls storming towards a team of engineers, swearing at each other and everyone around them. The shorter of the two was a pointed-looking woman wearing red glasses not unlike the visor of the Jaeger she had just rode in on, and the taller was the woman he’d seen on the newsreel that morning, eyepatch and all. Tilting his head, he could make out the finer points of their screaming argument, though considering the acoustics of the maintenance bay, this was only difficult for the people who didn’t speak troll.

_“If you’d just turned off the exhaust ports we’d have been fine instead of up to our asses in fucking coolant!”_

_“Oh please, like my failure to flip a switch is the reason our right arm is busted!”_

_“I was saving our lives!”_

_“You were posturing for the cameras because you’re a fucking whore for fame and you know it!”_

_“Go fuck yourself with a rusty sword, Pyrope!”_

_“Are you offering me one, Serket?”_

“Guess they’re at it again,” Dave said acidly, actually looking at one of his files and reviewing their contents.

“You can understand them?” Karkat didn’t think humans bothered with trying to comprehend Alternian: their vocal chords weren’t equipped to speak it so most of them gave up right from the get-go.

“Five years working at Interspec makes you as close to bilingual as you can get without having the vocal ability to speak alien bug language,” Dave shrugged, glancing down at the two of them. “Wonder where they’re gonna settle today?”

“What?” Karkat was perplexed at Dave’s comment. As he watched, the two troll women’s argument rapidly deteriorated into nothing but shrieked buzzing Alternian swearing, and beside him he heard Dave chuckle.

“Any second now,” Dave said, his smirk returned. “Any second.”

Karkat watched silently, still clueless, but as he watched the two trolls start to shove each other and get in each other’s faces, things became clear. His eyes widened as the troll wearing the red glasses shoved her co-pilot against one of the maintenance bay’s support beams and slammed their lips together in a thoroughly aggressive kiss.

“Hah,” Dave laughed, closing his files and raising a hand to his ear, no doubt to address someone over a comm system. “Hey John, looks like you owe me twenty bucks, they’re pitch as fuck today.”

Karkat could hear whoever was on the other end of the line cursing in annoyance, but he ignored it, staring at the sight of the pilots making out in a mix of confusion and straight up horror. “What…” he breathed. “The fuck?”

“Welcome to the circus,” Dave said, taking out his phone to snap a picture of the scene. “Nothing like the violent vacillations of Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope to give you a taste of standard operating procedure here at the Shatterdome.” He leaned over the rail to yell down at them, a hand around his mouth to amplify his words. “Hey ladies, do us all a favour and get a room!”

“EAT SHIT STRIDER!” the troll women yelled in unison before returning to sucking each other’s faces.

“They’re…” Karkat blinked, bewildered. “They’re not moirails?”

“Not all the time,” Dave chuckled. “Maybe a quarter of the time.”

Karkat stared down at the spectacle on the Shatterdome floor, his head spinning with questions. Interspecies Drifting. Untrained pilots. Pilots who Drifted without being in a moirallegiance.

He shook his head. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some exposition, the ever important First Meeting, and a shit ton of new characters on the playing field. Including some bomb ass Jaegers. 
> 
> Special thanks again to my beta, Taz, and to my Discord server friends for their hilarious and delightful reactions, and to you, the readers, for your kudos and comments. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Now with absolutely [STUNNING art](http://cityinthesea.tumblr.com/post/151617987874/i-drew-the-first-meeting-scene-of-if-i-lose) by cityinthesea!


	4. Like A Fist In A Fight

_She’s sleeping at a storage space by the airport._  
_The only thing she talks about is TV._  
_The only thing that tethers us together_

_Is the thing that most matters at the end of the night._  
_Ashes to ashes and dust in the spotlight._  
_Flying all around like a fist in fight._  
_Tired of always feeling frustrated._  
\-- From ‘The Only Thing’ by The Hold Steady  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Czp0RxqMA))

__

It took Dave a moment to notice Karkat wasn’t following him along the walkway. He stopped, shuffling his files for what was probably the thousandth time since he’d met Karkat and Dirk at the top of the Shatterdome, and cleared his throat. “Want me to take another picture?”

“Fuck off,” Karkat snarled, wheeling away from the virulent display off hate-affection occurring down on the lowest floor of the maintenance bay. “I wasn’t staring.”

“Could have fooled me,” Dave shrugged, smirking at the troll. He really was easy to rile up, it was almost comical. “But hey, doubt you’re gonna need photographic evidence of that shit tornado, it’s about as common around here as basic conversation.”

“I wasn’t fucking staring, Strider!” he snapped, his eyes narrowing with fury as he glared down at Dave. “Back off.”

Dave’s eyebrows went up. Karkat had taken a step towards him and he’d only just realized that the troll was _large_. Maybe not as tall as some of the trolls he knew, after all, six and a half feet was chump change for his species, but next to Dave’s modest five feet ten inches and slender frame he was a tower of steely muscle and fury, coiled like springs and ready for a fight.

Dave swallowed. It was terrifying, but at the same time he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Ranger Karkat Vantas was essentially a sentient car crash, wild and leaving wanton destruction in his wake, and seeing him this incensed in person was unexpected and almost mesmerizing. “Okay,” Dave took a step back to counter Karkat’s approach. “Backing off, dude, holy fuck, I knew you had a habit of getting your rage on, but this is bordering on flirting.”

Karkat froze, almost dropping the lumpy bag he had slung over his shoulder. “Telling someone to stop being a fucking douchelord isn’t flirting, ass,” he said, his scowl so deep it was practically carved into his face. “All this time working with trolls, any reasonable human would have figured out how quadrants actually worked.”

“Hey, just because I’m not dividing my love up into suits of cards doesn’t mean I’m a complete moron,” Dave replied, fidgeting with his files again. “Believe me, being the glorified babysitter for those flighty broads down there has made me uncomfortably familiar with your romantic hopscotch bullshit.”

Karkat fumed for a moment, glancing behind them again towards where Terezi and Vriska continued to tongue wrestle against a support beam. “I just…” he burst out, then trailed off, taking a deep breath. “How are they allowed to _do_ that?”

“What, make out?” Dave snorted. “Listen, Karkat, buddy, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to separate two seven foot tall troll women joined at the lips while they’re making for the hips, but it’s a bit of a shitshow. Zero stars, do not recommend.”

“Not that, assface,” Karkat snapped, crossing his arms and lowering his voice. “How are they allowed to… _vacillate_ like that?”

The way he’d said it, the hushed tone and slight reddening of his cheeks, made it sound like the filthiest word that ever could have come out of the troll’s mouth. Dave’s smile faded and he felt a twinge of sympathy. Things did work pretty differently here at Interspec. Maybe they should have led with that in the offer instead of ‘hey, we’re fucked, come save the world.’

Maybe.

“Guess it was all pale all the time back when you jockeyed, huh?” Dave asked.

“Of course it was,” Karkat’s voice was sharp, but he seemed to be more confused than flat-out angry at this point. “Pilots who were Drift compatible were that way because of strong moirallegiances, you couldn’t have one without the other!”

Dave nodded, having heard similar things from the other troll pilots in the past. “What if you and your co-pilot weren’t pale?”

The expression Karkat made put Dave in mind of someone who’d just been offered the opportunity to eat their own foot. “It just didn’t happen,” he said, his tone still hushed. “It was … _wrong_.”

“Like so many other things on Alternia, I’m guessing,” Dave adjusted his glasses and tucked his files under his arm again. “Guessing they were still pretty hardcore about hemocaste bullshit in the resistance too?”

This time Karkat’s face definitely turned red, though he did his best to mask it with a scowl. “The only reason the highbloods didn’t instantly cull me when I showed up to the resistance was that Gamzee would have painted the walls with their blood,” he said, his face twisting.

Dave didn’t want to seem like a creep. Obviously he knew who Gamzee was, he’d been reading Karkat’s files for over a month, but acting the omniscient observer wasn’t going to earn him any favours. Not that he was particularly looking for them, but if he was going to actually succeed at trying to match this guy up with a co-pilot and subsequently saving their asses, he had to use every angle he could find. “Your moirail, right?”

Karkat nodded, the twist in his face deepening. “Guessing you already know that, Strider,” he grumbled, his eyes flickering down to the files under Dave’s arm. “Those files aren’t for show, you’ve probably got a dossier on me so detailed you know me better than I do.”

Dave winced. So much for that. “The guys in charge wanted me to be thorough,” he said, shrugging apologetically. “And I try to be good at my job. It’s classified shit, but I’m not here to hide anything from you, so here.” He separated the topmost file from the stack and held it out to the troll. “It’s all yours. Nobody else has had eyes on it but me, Dirk, and Marshal Egbert, and now that you’re here it’s just kindling.”

Karkat eyed him suspiciously, clearly trying to discern his intentions. After a long moment, he snatched the file out of Dave’s hands and pressed it to his chest, almost like he was trying to protect it. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“Least I can do,” Dave shrugged. “Can’t say I’d be thrilled about a stranger delving into my private life.”

Karkat laughed mirthlessly. “Sure,” he said. “But the list of potential co-pilots in your files tells me I don’t really have a choice about that either, do I?”

Dave grimaced. He’d expected this guy to be war weary and maybe a bit on the hostile side, but this was almost the attitude of a man being led to his execution. “There’s some choice in the scenario,” he explained. “We’re not just gonna shove the first Drift compatible applicant into a Jaeger with you, you’ll have the chance to scope them out, get to know them, buy them dinner first.”

“I’m not here looking for another moirail,” Karkat scowled. “This is about saving our respective species, not romance.”

“Whoa, hey, Karkat,” Dave held up his hands again. “It was a joke, fuck, if that stick in your ass gets any more jammed up there you’ll be shitting diamonds.”

“OH FUCK YOU,” Karkat bellowed, his voice bouncing around the maintenance bay, cutting through the pneumatic drills and crackling sparks. “GOD YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.”

“Ah, so it’th not jutht me who notithed,” a lisping voice behind him made Dave turn and he saw the head of LOCCENT, Sollux Captor, standing near the exit to the walkway with a grin on his face. He was maybe a couple of inches taller than Karkat, his double horns and 3D style movie glasses clashing horribly with his regulation fatigues. “Long time no thee, KK.”

“Sollux?” Karkat’s mouth dropped open, his bile toward Dave forgotten as he stepped around him, dropping his bag and scooping the other troll up in what looked to be a bone-crushing hug. “Holy shit.”

Sollux squirmed a little in the embrace, but returned it, his smile remaining. “Good to have you back, bro,” he said. “LOTHENT ithn’t the thame without your voithe thpewing creative epithetth over the comm.”

“I can’t believe you’re alive!” Karkat set his old friend back down and stared at him, leaving Dave to feel slightly awkward just behind them. “After what happened with _Miracle_ , I thought…”

“I’d died? Yeah, me too. Made it out alive though,” Sollux said, flashing his fangs. “Jutht barely, but our wrecked-to-thit mobile command thenter made land jutht outthide of Than Franthithco and the Marthal’th picked uth up.”

“Is Aradia here too?”

“Down in the thienthe divithion,” Sollux said. “Working on exthpethimenth and rethearch with Roxthy. Go thay hi to her when you’re free if you can, the’ll be glad to thee you again.”

“Glad to see y’all are already acquainted,” Dave said, feeling like a bit of an asshole for breaking up the reunion. “It’ll make getting you back in the saddle that much smoother, ‘KK’.”

Karkat whirled on him, the glare back in his eyes. “You don’t get to call me that,” he spat. “Nobody calls me that but my friends, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I think you’re a fucking douche.”

“You’re right,” Sollux agreed, smirking at Dave. “That’th the thecond thing I have to thay about Dave Thtrider. He’th a total doucthe.”

Karkat snorted. “What’s the first?”

“He’th pretty hot for a human.”

Dave felt his cheeks redden as Karkat gave Sollux a horror-struck look, his stomach twisting as he took a step back. “Shut your solicitous mouth, Captor,” he managed, picking up Karkat’s bag and shoving it in his direction, trying to maintain composure. “You know I’m not interested.”

“Right, right,” Sollux rolled his eyes, causing Karkat to snicker as he re-shouldered his bag. “And ith it becauthe you can’t wrap your human thinkpan around quadrantth, or ith it becauth I’m a male?”

“Pick one,” Dave snapped, his composure failing. Banter with Sollux was practically an olympic sport in his daily life, but he was in no mood to be embarrassed in front of the new pilot, even if Karkat and Sollux were old-time bosom buddies. “Get TZ to flip a coin to help you make up your mind.”

Karkat snorted. “Humans,” he shook his head. “You really do all have your heads up your fucking nooks about sexuality, don’t you?”

“Not all of ‘em,” Sollux supplied. “Just D-Eth here. Every other word out of his mouth ith a clumthy black tholithitathion with an even clumthier ‘no human homo’ thrown in right after. It’d be wreaking havoc on my pump bithcuit if I wath interethted in anything beyond making hith life mitherable.”

“I’m glad your fragile heart remains intact,” Dave said, his composure slowly returning as he shifted his files, holding them almost in a hug in front of his chest. “Nice to know my irresistible charms don’t distract you from what really matters, like, oh, fuck me, I don’t know, doing your fucking job?”

“Claththy ath ever,” Sollux deadpanned. “C’mon KK, pretty thure your tour guideth nextht thtop wath my bathe of operathionth.”

“I said do _your_ job, not mine,” Dave sniped, stepping forward to pass the two of them. “Stop dicking around and get your ‘ath’ back to LOCCENT so I can introduce Karkat to the rest of your team of ne’er-do-wells.”

“Thir yeth thir,” Sollux replied, lisping extra hard on the initial ‘s’ sounds of each sir and spattering Dave with mustardy saliva, which Dave wiped away in disgust. “Let’th get thith thow on the road. Jutht like old timeth.”

The three of them exited the walkway and ascended a few flights of rickety stairs towards the LOCCENT command center. Around them base activity had kicked up a couple of notches, meaning they had to duck and dodge out of the way of repair crews, but even at a slow walk they made good time up to the command center.

Dave was used to the clusterfuck of human and troll activity up in LOCCENT, but it didn’t occur to him until he looked back and saw Karkat gaping again that the troll hadn’t been in a command center like this for years, if ever. He didn’t know all the details of the resistance’s command structure, but the stories Sollux liked to tell when he’d had a little too much honey definitely evoked images that were a far cry from the massive control room in which they now stood.

“Welcome to the Thunderdome,” Dave said, stopping to give Karkat a chance to catch up with him as Sollux returned to his spot at the head of the room, where he immediately took a seat and began barking lisped orders into a headset. “Every Kaiju attack gets monitored, recorded, and directed in this place. Two monsters enter, only one leaves.”

Karkat managed to compose himself enough to take a look around, and Dave was struck by how attentive the troll was. No detail seemed to be too small as he examined each console, the faces of the humans and trolls working behind them, the patterns and pathways of technicians darting in and out through the side doors and the beeping of notifiers. When he wasn’t a ball of nerves and fury, Karkat Vantas appeared to be a stickler for the little things.

The two of them were broken out of their respective reveries by the approach of the Marshal and John, and Dave felt himself snap to attention automatically, years of training shouting from his hindbrain. Karkat did the same, because clearly old habits died hard, and if there was anyone on this base who actually commanded enough gravitas to inspire a salute, it was Marshal Egbert.

“Sir,” Dave said. “Good to see you this morning.”

“Officer Strider,” Egbert said, giving him a salute, then turning to Karkat. The two of them were practically the same height. “And this is Ranger Vantas, I presume.”

“Sir,” Karkat echoed Dave, giving a salute that still snapped and felt official despite his evident time away from the military.

“At ease, gentlemen,” Egbert gave them a smile, his blue eyes crinkling. “I know it’s the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean we have to be completely serious.” He offered Karkat a hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Karkat. Phil Egbert, resident head of Interspec and keeper of the zoo.”

“Thanks for having me,” Karkat said as he shook his hand, though Dave could tell he said it more out of politeness than genuine sentiment.

Marshal Egbert gave the pilot a polite smile, then gestured to John beside him. “This is my son,” he said. “Junior Communications officer John Egbert. He’s been working with the LOCCENT team for about a year now, he’s showing a lot of promise.”

“For once in my life,” John chuckled, grinning up at Karkat through his overbite. “Nice to meet you.”

John held out a hand and Karkat made to take it, but Dave stepped between the two of them, giving his friend a look. “John, don’t do the thing.”

“The fuck?” Karkat looked indignant. “Strider, do you have no concept of personal space!?”

“Pretty sure every sentient being responds poorly to minor electric shocks,” Dave said, taking John’s hand and holding it up to show it to Karkat.

The troll peered at the device wedged between John’s fingers and his face darkened into a scowl. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

John grinned at Karkat sheepishly. “Hey, the hand buzzer handshake is a classic!”

“A classic display of idiocy,” Dave muttered, taking the little device off of John’s hand and handing it to the Marshal, who chuckled despite his attempts to give a look of stern fatherly disapproval. “I swear, if I had a dollar for every one of these I took away from you I could retire and give up this life of bullshit.”

“You’ll have to excuse my son,” Marshal Egbert said, patting John on the back. “He’s something of an incorrigible prankster.”

“Understatement of the century,” Dave muttered, shaking his head. “I swear, between you and Jane I think I’ve lived through more prank wars than Kaiju attacks.”

“The barbasol bomb incident was harmless!” John protested.

“Only because I had a fire extinguisher!”

John shook his head. “How can shaving cream be so flammable?” he murmured. “I still don’t know.”

“Anyway,” Marshal Egbert clapped his son on the shoulder again. “Prankster’s gambits aside, my boy’s a valued part of the LOCCENT team. Once you’re back in a cockpit, you’ll get used to his voice in your ear.”

“Can’t wait,” Karkat grumbled, his sarcasm making Dave repress a snort. “Sounds fucking delightful.”

“That’s John for you,” Dave agreed. “I’m gonna keep the tour going.”

“As you were,” Marshal Egbert gave them both a smile Dave could only describe as paternal and stepped away, heading for the front of the room and Sollux’s console, John returning to his own station.

Dave led Karkat around the room briefly, introducing him to everyone who wasn’t currently coding or speaking into a headset. He’d been joking when he’d told Karkat there would be a test later to see if he remembered all the names, but watching Karkat greet each person gave him the sneaking suspicion that if he actually gave the troll a quiz he’d match names to faces faster than Dave ever could have hoped to on his first day.

Turned out the angry abrasive troll was a people person. Today was just full of surprises.

They left LOCCENT the way they’d come in and proceeded down a different adjacent walkway, going deeper into the Shatterdome beyond the maintenance bay. “Next stop’s construction,” Dave said, shuffling his files again. He’d never quite figured out why he had the constant urge to adjust the stacks of paper and card he seemed to carry with him everywhere, but it was calming, a reassuring reminder of something solid. “Had to save the best for last.”

Karkat grunted, clearly not expecting anything exciting, and Dave resisted the urge to lay into him. Sure, their options were slim on the ground when it came to finding a pilot for this new Jaeger, but he was basically their last hope. Would it kill him to care a bit more?

They went through a narrow concrete corridor on the far end of the bay, passing more maintenance crews, and came out on the other side in the room Dave had practically lived in for the last year and a half. Construction bays were always smaller auxiliary spaces compared to the maintenance dome and launch zones, but it still had the vaulted ceilings that caused echoes to ring out and bounce up and down the walls. At a glance it looked like everything was on schedule, and Dave felt a swell of pride in his chest as he turned back to Karkat and held out a hand dramatically, displaying the fruits of his labors.

“I know it’s not quite as good as having her back,” he said, watching Karkat’s face slacken in wonder. “But there’s more of _Miracle_ in her than anything else.”

He followed the troll’s awed gaze and took in the sight of the newly constructed Jaeger himself. She was a breathtaking spectacle up close, and Dave’s pride grew as he studied the specifics of her. The original purple and grey hull plating had been faded and scratched after the last fight and was now replaced with a deep blood red interspersed with chrome. She was clearly part Alternian retrofit, part amalgamated human design, a truly unique feat of interspecies engineering.

“Holy shit,” Karkat breathed. For the first time since he’d arrived, he was close to speechless.

Dave smiled. He couldn’t blame him. “Double core nuclear reactor,” he said, tapping his knuckles on his files. “Hull is solid iron, forty engine blocks per muscle strand, hyper torque driver for every limb, upgraded fluid synapse system, the works.” One of the engineers approached him to pass him a file, which he glanced over quickly before nodding, sending the man running back to work. “They have to put the finishing touches on her, heated seats and minibar and all that, but she’ll be ready to launch by the time you find a co-pilot.”

Karkat fidgeted with his bag and gave Dave a look that seemed to almost indicate that he was truly seeing him for the first time. “So,” he began. “You were in charge of all this?”

Dave nodded. “Been working on the restoration for over a year,” he said. “She’s my baby, cared for morning, noon, and night, the result of hours of blood, sweat, tears, other suspicious bodily fluids.”

Karkat gave him a look that was a mixture of disgust and horror. “Strider, If you aren’t joking I’m going to go walk off the top of the Shatterdome and throw myself into the ocean.”

“See, you make threats like that, but I’m pretty sure your melodrama doesn’t extend quite that far,” Dave said, smirking again. “And nah, the fluids are purely metaphorical. The time isn’t though. I have a lot of jobs around here, but this one’s been taking up the bulk of my waking hours, and more than a few I’d usually spend asleep.”

Karkat returned his gaze to the Jaeger in front of them, and then he was back to the scrutinizing stare he’d had when they were over at LOCCENT, memorizing and cataloguing every detail. Dave wondered why he was so attentive of the precise layout of every circuit, every chrome panel, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d looked at the Jaeger the same way every day he’d been working on her. His stomach dropped as he looked back across the construction bay at the metal behemoth, dull red and sparkling silver body and the helmet section set on top, the visor cold and empty glass staring back at him.

She’d been his project, but she wasn’t his. Not in the same way that she was going to be Karkat’s. She would belong to Karkat and whoever he picked as his co-pilot.

And no matter how much he wanted to be the one to pilot her, Dave knew he’d be watching her fight from his usual spot up in LOCCENT.

His mouth tightened into a hard line and he shuffled his files again, a little too hard this time, his fingers suddenly stinging with papercuts. They stood there in silence as Karkat surveyed the Jaeger, only breaking the silence after what was probably a full five minutes of scrutiny.

“What’s her name?”

Dave shrugged, his mouth still tight. “Don’t know yet,” he said. “The names are always part intuition, part representation of the pilots, at least they are around here.”

Karkat nodded, probably reviewing the names of the other Interspec Jaegers in his head as he considered this. “So she doesn’t get a name until I get a co-pilot?”

Dave nodded, trying not to think about the hollow longing in his chest as he stood there looking at the project he’d slaved over for a year. “That’s how it works, yeah,” he said. “Dirk and Marshal Egbert take a whole bunch of shit into account, your record, the record of your co-pilot, the design of the Jaeger, they’ll come up with something suitably badass and fear-inspiring, don’t worry.”

“Whatever,” Karkat shrugged, and his dismissiveness made Dave’s insides curl with anger. He didn’t understand how the troll could care so little for something so important. “Long as it’s not _Miracle II_ or some bullshit, that’d be the worst way to commemorate her.”

“I’ll alert the appropriate authorities,” Dave deadpanned, trying to reign in his anger, which gnawed hopeless and hungry at his insides. “Gotten your eyeful?”

The troll bristled, much to Dave’s satisfaction. “My ganderbulbs are practically bursting with pertinent imagery,” he growled. “What’s left on the tour?”

“That’s it,” Dave said, starting to walk towards one of the archways on the opposite side of the repair bay, Karkat following him. “Last stop coming up.”

They made the rest of the walk in silence, Karkat seeming to have picked up on his less than chipper mood. Dave was annoyed with himself for not covering his emotions with his usual poker face, but these were extenuating circumstances, and he couldn’t paste on a happy veneer around this guy, not any more. He was too bitter.

He led Karkat through the archway past several junctions, the area more sparsely populated with engineers and technicians. Once he reached the living quarters, he felt a knot in his stomach, realizing where Dirk had assigned Karkat for his bunk.

It was the empty room directly across from Dave’s.

It was like adding insult to injury. Dave was sure his brother hadn’t meant anything malicious by it, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like he’d been punched in the gut with the reality of his situation. Here he was, head of the restoration team to one of the most unique and powerful Jaegers in history, that he’d redesigned and overseen from the ground up, and in spite of his every painstaking effort, his hours logged in simulations, his off-the-charts brain scan compatibility, he was still on the ground. He’d ignored the thought as best he could for weeks, but it all came crashing down as he stood in the hallway, looking at the troll who would be piloting the Jaeger that was his life’s work.

Dave wasn’t a pilot. He was ground crew, and he was going to stay ground crew for the rest of his life, and nothing, not even the highest simulator score on record and overseeing his own goddamn construction project, was going to change that.

Dave cleared his throat, realizing they’d been standing in the corridor a little too long, and stepped across the hall to stand in front of the door, turning the pneumatic wheel that opened it and tugging. “Here’s your quarters,” he said, knowing he wasn’t keeping the bitterness out of his voice. At this point he found he really didn’t care. “Mess hall is back the way you came west of the elevators, showers are at the end of the hall. You’ve got the rest of the day to yourself. Co-pilot selection starts tomorrow at 0600.”

Karkat stepped past him into the small room, empty except for a long metal desk and a full recuperacoon. He set his bag down, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Thanks,” he said begrudgingly.

Dave flipped through his files and pulled out a small stack of papers, presenting them to Karkat. “Your co-pilot candidates,” he said, aware that his voice was still cold. “I hope you’re cool with my choices. I cross referenced neural scans and fighting styles with what I gathered from review of footage of your strategies and techniques.” He paused, watching Karkat flip through the list with his claws. “Even your last fight in Alaska.”

“Thorough,” Karkat grunted, putting the stack of papers down on the desk. He’d barely looked at them, despite his previously displayed attention to detail, and Dave felt his anger sharpen. “How do you know so much about pilot techniques? You ever train to be a ranger?”

It was clearly a throwaway question, meant to feign interest, but Dave’s anger made him dig into the comment, his voice barbed and hostile as he spoke. “I did,” he said. “Started when I first got here.”

“Same time as your sister?” Karkat asked, his tone indicating slight curiosity. Dave studied the troll through his shades and could tell that he held some interest, at least in the oddness of that situation.

“Same time,” Dave agreed. He knew the question was coming, he braced himself for it, but it still felt like another blow to the gut as it fell from Karkat’s lips:

“So how come she’s a pilot and you aren’t?”

He blew out a sigh, shuffling his files again. “Shenanigans,” he supplied, hoping his tone made it clear that he wasn’t interested in discussing it further. Karkat’s eyebrows went up and the bitter sting in his gut made him blurt out: “It’s not my sim scores, I can tell you that.”

The troll’s eyebrows became lost in his hair. “Really?”

Dave nodded. He couldn’t keep the vitriol out of his voice. “Fifty-one drops, fifty-one kills.”

Dave felt some satisfaction at the look of shock on Karkat’s face. “ _Fifty-one_?” The troll said, his tone almost reverent. “Fuck.”

“That’s right,” Dave nodded again, the familiar feeling of bravado wrapping around him like a security blanket. “I’m kind of a big deal.”

“And your record isn’t in that pile of names you just handed me?”

Karkat’s voice cut through his smug veneer like it was soggy paper. Dave was glad his shades helped him maintain a neutral expression. He pressed his lips together. “Yeah, well,” he said. “Like I said, shenanigans.”

The troll gave him a suspicious look, unzipping his jacket and shrugging it off. He seemed to want to ask more questions, but kept the urge to himself. “Right,” he said. “Shenanigans or not, it means you aren’t completely incompetent, and that’s the first reassuring thing I’ve heard all fucking day.”

Dave scowled in spite of himself. The chip on this guy’s shoulder was more of a boulder, and he wanted to smash it over Karkat’s head. His mouth was a thin line now. He turned to leave. “I’ll meet you in the sparring room tomorrow morning. The Deputy Marshal and I will be overseeing the assessment process.”

“Huh, now who’s suddenly formal?” Karkat’s face twisted into a smirk. “Doesn’t seem like your style, Strider.”

“Just doing my job, Vantas,” he replied, his tone filled with ice. “I’d suggest you do the same.”

Karkat stepped back, frowning. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Dave felt his free fist tighten involuntarily. “It means,” he said, his teeth clenched. “That Dirk brought you here for a specific purpose, and that purpose is to kill Kaiju and save the world. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you do it.”

Karkat crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at him with anger in his eyes. “The fuck is your deal?” he asked. “You’ve studied my fucking techniques, you know what I’m capable of, you should know better than anyone here that I’m going to do my fucking job.”

“I know better than anyone here that you’re a reckless mess,” Dave shot back. His cool was so lost it was in a different universe. “I’ve watched hours of footage of you fights and I know that most of the time when you get in the shit, you do an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle and fight like you don’t care who lives or dies as long as the horrorterror in front of you ends up in pieces. You’re dangerous, and you’re unpredictable, and I don’t think you’re the right man for this mission.”

Karkat looked almost like he’d been slapped. He stared down at Dave, his anger fading into a look Dave took a moment to parse. Loneliness. Sadness. Regret. After a moment he sighed. “I know that’s easy to think from the other side of a screen,” he said. “But strategy and tactics take a back seat to instinct when you’re staring down twenty five hundred tons of murder and tentacles, and you have to make decisions, and live with the consequences.” He narrowed his eyes. “That’s the kind of thing you know when you’re a pilot.”

Karkat didn’t say ‘real pilot’, but the words hovered between them, unsaid but throbbing like a bruise. Dave set his jaw and took a step back, giving him a curt nod. “Right,” he said. “There’s a lotta things you know when you’re a pilot, from what I understand. Like not running from the fight.” He glared at Karkat. “Oh, wait.”

Karkat let out a sound that Dave was pretty sure was a growl. “I don’t care how much you’ve read in files or watched in videos, but you don’t know my life, Strider, and you cannot possibly fathom the mountain of shit that I have had to wade through just to stay alive. So how about you fuck off back to your desk and leave the fighting to the real heroes.”

“Sure, I’ll do that,” Dave laughed derisively. “If you know one, send him my way.”

Karkat looked like he was going to start yelling again, but he sucked in a deep breath and took a few steps further into his room. Dave took the hint and backed out of the room, crossing the hall to his own quarters. As he pulled the pneumatic wheel and stepped inside, he glanced back across to Karkat’s room. The troll’s door was still ajar, and through the gap Dave could see him carefully peeling off his shirt, displaying a muscular grey back that was covered with the thin white lines and pale gashes of long-healed wounds.

The troll looked up, noticing Dave staring, and he grunted, saying nothing but tossing his shirt over his shoulder, unashamed of the cross-hatching of scars on his tough skin. A moment hung in the air between them before Karkat moved, breaking the spell and pushing his door shut.

Dave closed his own door and leaned against it, sighing. Well, that could have gone worse. Better, sure, but it wasn’t like it mattered. The Interspec program had their pilot, and he was still the guy on the ground. Karkat’s unspoken but obvious words twisted in his mind, eating away at him as they played over and over like a skipping record, his fists clenching in involuntary, impotent frustration.

_Real pilot._

_Real pilot._

_Real pilot._

The worst part of it all, the part that really chewed him up, was that Karkat was right.

He wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the dulthet thoundth of Tholluxth thpeaking in thith chapter. 
> 
> Thanks again everyone who's been reading and leaving comments and kudos! So glad you keep coming back to this little slice of mayhem!


	5. A Place That Still Remains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW for nightmares featuring minor character death in this chapter

_I'd listen to the words he'd say_  
 _but in his voice I heard decay_  
 _the plastic face forced to portray_  
 _all the insides left cold and gray_  
 _there is a place that still remains_  
 _it eats the fear it eats the pain_  
 _the sweetest price he'll have to pay_  
 _the day the whole world went away_  
\-- From ‘The Day the World Went Away’ by Nine Inch Nails  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNrnjyuD4fE))

__

Karkat stayed in his new room for several hours, unpacking his meager possessions and setting them up in an attempt to make the space look less like a prison cell. Despite his efforts the desk still seemed sparse after he’d added his stack of worn DVDs and husktop, the walls still bare despite the grimy pictures he’d taped up. Most of them were of him and Gamzee back in their resistance days, a few of them including Sollux and Aradia and some of the other lowbloods who had worked on the mobile LOCCENT ship. He looked at them as he pulled on a clean shirt, feeling his bloodpusher ache and his ganderbulbs prickle with the threat of tears.

It was all just too much. The Jaeger made from pieces of _Miracle_ , the troll pilots sparring (and _vacillating_ , what the fuck), the humans who couldn’t even hope to understand just what he and the other members of his species had gone through.

He huffed out a breath, leaning against the sloping wall of his room and staring blankly at the photographs. The nearest one was of him and Gamzee during a rare moment of downtime. He wasn’t sure who had taken it - some random sucker passing by, he figured, amused by the short shouting troll and the tall gangly Juggalo beside him, practically using him as an armrest. His moirail’s clown makeup was smeared all over Karkat’s sleeve and they both had their helmets in their free hands. He could make out the purple and grey chassis of _Miracle_ in the background and his hands clenched into fists involuntarily, his claws digging into his palms.

Strider was right. He wasn’t even close to being a hero, he was a fucking coward.

A few pairs of clean Interspec fatigues sat on the shelf beside the recuperacoon and he changed into them, looking himself over in the dingy mirror leaning up against the far wall. They fit perfectly, and as he shrugged on the jacket he saw that the chest pocket was embroidered with his sign. His gut clenched. In blood red.

Karkat grimaced. The resistance was all about defying the hemocaste, obviously, but the swooping lines of his sign stitched in cherry candy coloured thread on full display still made him feel like he was going to vomit. Sure, being in the resistance had always been a good step above getting culled, but that didn’t make him feel any less nauseated.

His digestion sac growled and he realized it wasn’t fully nausea, just regular hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually eaten a meal. It may have been last night, or whatever the Hong Kong timezone equivalent of last night actually was. Strider had mentioned the mess hall was back the way they had come before he’d spewed somewhat justified vitriol in Karkat’s direction and stormed off to his respiteblock, which was apparently right across the hall.

He still couldn’t figure the human out, and he mulled his impressions of the guy over as he shut the door and headed down the concrete hallway. Obviously he was an asshole, that much was clear even just from their brief interaction on the tour, but if he really did have that high a score on the simulator, Karkat couldn’t help but wonder why the fuck he wasn’t a co-pilot candidate. It was always possible the neural scans didn’t match up, but wouldn’t that have been the first thing Strider would have mentioned when Karkat had called him out?

He passed through the construction bay and glanced over at the new Jaeger as he crossed the walkways. Looking over her hull again, he was struck by the differences in her design, and how she seemed to be lacking the things he had once complained about _Miracle_ having many sweeps ago. Fighting in a stolen Mech that was designed for different pilots meant he couldn’t be choosy, but this retrofit looked like it was absolutely created with him in mind. The limbs were more streamlined, the visor wide to account for the curved shape of the helmet. He couldn’t see any weapons immediately in view, but the maintenance teams he could see were configuring the arm plates to account for retractable blades, possibly rockets.

Karkat couldn’t help but feel surprised. When Strider had said he’d been overseeing construction, he’d definitely not been expecting the result to be a Mech that had been designed specifically to favour his fighting style. It wasn’t just bravado then, Dave really did give a fuck about this Jaeger succeeding.

Dave Strider was still a smug tool though. That fact was incontestable.

He took the west hallway when he reached the atrium, passing the elevators and following the stream of engineers and technicians who had clearly had the same idea as him. The mess hall was larger than he’d expected, rows of tables and benches lining the walls with a path down the middle that led to where the food was set up near the back. Making his way to the buffet line he filled his tray with heaping helpings of every troll-friendly option that was available, wondering to himself how the fuck they could afford to give out this much food to everyone. They were fighting a war, and he’d been living off of boxed rations ever since he’d set foot on this planet. The tureens of grubloaf and tuberpaste overflowed, and he could see bottles of grub sauce, real actual motherfucking grub sauce, sitting at the end of the line. He smiled. He was going to eat like a fucking highblood tonight.

He stepped away from the buffet line, tray practically sagging with all the foodstuffs he’d picked up. As he surveyed the assorted Shatterdome inhabitants eating their evening meals in the mess hall he caught sight of somebody waving out of the corner of his eye.

“Karkat! Karkat, over here!”

He almost wished he could jump back in time and tell his past self that someday he would be in a position where the Heiress Fucking Apparent to the Entire Alternian Empire would be waving vigorously at him from across the room while also pointing at an empty seat just beside her. His life was bordering on comically surreal at this point.

He crossed the mess hall to greet Feferi, his stomach churning slightly. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the way she looked. Sure, her hair was longer and less full of tentacles, and she wore little pink goggles instead of those weird shitty wing-tipped glasses, but it was still unnerving. She sat at the table with three other trolls, and Karkat recognized them as some of the pilots he had seen on his tour earlier, Kanaya seated across from Feferi with Equius and Nepeta to her left.

“Hey,” he said, raising a hand in greeting awkwardly.

“Hi Karkat!” Feferi bubbled, her face all smiles. “Come sit with us!”

“Sure,” he said, stepping over the bench to take a seat beside her. He felt dwarfed next to her, nine feet of grey fins and flowing hair and curving horns. So much time around humans and lower blooded trolls had made him almost forget that the vast majority of his species was fucking huge.

“Everyone, this is Karkat Vantas,” Feferi said to the rest of the group, her voice still cheery. “He’s here to join the fight!”

“How excellent,” Kanaya said, leaning forward and offering him an immaculately manicured hand. “Kanaya Maryam, co-pilot of Rosemary. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Karkat grunted, shaking her hand and trying not to feel intimidated by the fact that the jadeblooded troll was literally glowing. Fuck, rainbow drinkers were spooky. “I’ve seen you fight.”

“Kanaya’s technique is pawsitively purrfect!” Nepeta leaned forward across the table as Kanaya released his hand, brandishing her own. “I’m Nepeta Leijon! It’s so nice to finally meet you!”

“And I am Nepeta’s co-pilot, Equius Zahhak,” the mountainous troll beside her rumbled, holding out his massive hand. It had a sheen of sweat on it. “I have heard much of you, Ranger Vantas.”

Karkat shook each of their hands, discreetly wiping his own off after releasing Equius’s grip. “I remember you two from the resistance,” he said. “Always wanted to meet you.”

“Better late than never!” Nepeta chirped, adjusting her hat, which was the same blue one with the cat ears from earlier. “We used to hear allll about the things you and Gamzee could do, I was sad I never got the chance to talk to you in purrson!”

“A feeling shared by both of us,” Equius rumbled, folding his arms gently. “I commend you for your tenacious style of combat, Ranger Vantas. I admit my first impression of you was… less than favourable,” the massive troll actually looked embarrassed, even ashamed. He’d never seen anything other than contempt from a blueblood. “But my time here with the Interspecies Defense Program has helped enlighten me to the flaws in the hemocaste system. Your abilities are impressive, regardless of your…” he trailed off, and Karkat could actually see the beats of sweat forming on his forehead. “Circumstances.”

“Equius!” Nepeta hissed, elbowing him in the stomach. “Stop making it weird.”

“I am not ‘making it weird,’ Nepeta,” Equius growled, clearly embarrassed now. “I am attempting to apologize for my past prejudices!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Karkat mumbled, suddenly violently aware of the candy red symbol stitched into his jacket. “‘S not a big deal.”

“And it never will be again if I have anything to say about it!” Feferi said, squirting some grub sauce onto her plate. “Once we win this war, the hemocaste will be the stuff of legends!” She turned to Karkat, looking down at him with a flip of her gills. “So, how was the rest of your tour?”

“It was a tour,” he shrugged, turning his attention to his tray and realizing just how hungry he was. “This is the best part.”

“The food here is surprisingly exceptional,” Kanaya commented, daintily raising a scoop of tuber paste to her mouth. “I have never had a bad meal in my time here in Hong Kong.”

“The purrks of having an open purrt,” Nepeta chirped. Karkat gave her a suspicious look. Was she making those puns on purpose? “We get all the best food from Hong Kong. No rationing!”

Karkat would have responded, but his mouth was full of grubloaf. He’d barely even registered starting to eat, but now it was all he could do, everything tasting so good he was ready to break into song and dance. Fuck he had missed real food.

“So you were able to see the newly constructed Jaeger on your tour of the facility?” Kanaya asked, tone still polite. Karkat suspected she always spoke in this tone, even when she was destroying horrorterrors, and that was somehow more terrifying than the image of her in a furious rage.

“Yeah,” he said after he swallowed a mouthful of grubloaf. “She’s looking a lot better than the last time I saw her, that’s for fucking sure.”

“I do not doubt that,” she intoned. “Are you eager to return to the fray?”

He shrugged. “As much as I can be,” he said. “Not knowing who my co-pilot’s gonna be kinda sucks anything resembling eagerness out of the situation, honestly.”

“I can only imagine,” Kanaya agreed, nodding gently, sympathetic. “When I first returned to active duty I was hesitant to Drift with somebody new.”

“Really?” Karkat leaned forward, curious. He hadn’t considered the fact that Kanaya had entered the program much in the same way he was now: a dead moirail and a new Mech, coming to the program while having never met her co-pilot candidates. She probably had useful advice.

“Oh most certainly,” she said, her nod solemn this time. “The loss of my moirail was exceedingly painful, and I feared I would never have the fortitude to pilot again. The chance to Drift with a different species did make that easier though, I must admit.”

Karkat felt curiosity tug at him. “How was it easier?”

“Humans aren’t naturally predisposed to Drifting and psychic links,” Feferi chimed in. “The interspecies Drifting experiments were tenuous at first, but once the science team adjusted their calculations to account for xenobiological differences, it was a breeze!”

“I think ‘breeze’ might be a slight understatement, Feferi,” Kanaya said, smiling. “But it certainly made things less uncomfortable for me when co-pilot selection began.”

“So it’s different?” Karkat asked. “Drifting with humans I mean.”

“It is in my experience,” Kanaya said. “From our prior conversations, I feel quite certain that Feferi agrees with me.”

“Glub!” Feferi beamed, Karkat taking her response as an affirmation. “It’s nice! I like it!”

“It isn’t… strange?” He asked, his stomach twisting. “Having a moirail who’s another species?”

Kanaya looked confused for half a second. “Rose and I are not moirails, Karkat,” she said. “We are matesprits.”

His jaw dropped, as did his fork, the latter making a noisy ‘clink’ against his tray. He couldn’t understand it, Kanaya said it so calmly, like it was natural as breathing. “I…” he croaked, trying to speak normally. “Is… is that… common?!”

“That is probably not the word I would use to describe it, no,” Kanaya said. “As I’m sure you know, humans experience attraction in a non-quadromantic way, thus a strong moirallegiance is not a required part of the co-pilot selection process.”

“It does help,” Feferi said, returning to her food. “Jade and I didn’t start out as morayls, but after we spent time together in the Drift, that was where we ended up settling.”

“Whereas Rose and I found ourselves settling in something rather more… flushed,” Kanaya had a hint of a blush, her cheeks tinged with green. “And I would daresay that it contributes to the two of us being even more effective on the battlefield.”

“I would be inclined to agree,” Equius said, his voice a low rumble. “Not that I would ever seek another co-pilot after everything Nepeta and I have been through.”

“Couldn’t imagine being in the cockpit with anybody else!” The smaller troll piped up, beaming up at her moirail. “But Equius is right, Rose and Kanaya are so amazing together, against the horrorterrors or just when they’re together in general. It’s so beautiful!” Her smile was dreamy. “I shipped it right from the start.”

“Shipped it?” Karkat was definitely confused now.

“Yeah!” Nepeta chirped, beaming. “As Interspec’s resident unofficial matchmaker, I keep track of all of the ships, both canon and unconfurrmed, here at the Shatterdome.”

He stared at her, nonplussed. “Uh…”

“Nepeta’s hobby helps to keep things light-hearted in such dark times,” Kanaya said. “As well as helping us keep track of the frequent maelstrom of quadrant vacillation that are our fellow Interspec pilots.”

“Yeah,” Karkat shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “I… saw some of that in the maintenance bay.”

“I heard they were back in spades,” Feferi said, her tone conspiratorial. “I was surprised, I’m pretty sure they were pale when they were heading out to Sydney.”

“You know how they are, Fef,” Nepeta grinned. “There’s no purredicting their flips and flops.”

“Unless you happen to be Dave,” Kanaya mused. “He seems to have a knack for timing out their twists and turns.”

Karkat flinched involuntarily at the sound of his tour guide’s name, but busied himself with his food to cover it up.

“Where is Dave anyway?” Feferi asked the table at large. “Usually he’s here when he’s not eating in the workshop.”

“I saw him meet up with Rose earlier,” Kanaya said, sipping her drink idly. “Said something about sparring, I believe.”

“Unsurprising,” Equius murmured, also sipping his drink, which Karkat suspected was milk. “If he is not in the simulator or working on the new Jaeger, he is most often found with the first person he can convince to join him in the ring.”

“In this case the first person was his twin sister,” Kanaya wiped at the table with a napkin, clearing up crumbs. “I offered, of course, but from the look of things he needed the assistance of family.”

“What’s his deal?” Karkat asked, having realized that if he wanted any kind of answers to his questions about the younger Strider’s attitude earlier that day, his fellow pilots would be the most likely candidates to provide them. “He always an insufferable douche or was I just lucky?”

“He does have a tendency towards more abrasive modes of expression,” Kanaya noted. “But I assure you, the ‘insufferable douche’ exterior merely covers up the very kind and intelligent young man beneath.”

“Talented too,” Feferi nodded. “I’ve seen him in the simulator before, and I don’t think we have anybody else at Interspec with that kind of record.”

“I heard about that,” Karkat muttered, curiosity egging him on. “How does a cadet with fifty-one drops and fifty-one kills spend all of his time on the ground and not in a fucking Jaeger?”

He saw the four trolls exchange glances, obviously uncomfortable, and he felt his eyebrows go up. Apparently the reasoning behind this situation was more serious than he’d anticipated. Eventually Kanaya cleared her throat delicately and spoke in a hushed tone. “Dave and Rose have a rather complex and fraught upbringing, and it is one that has … deeply affected the former’s mental health. His human brother, as deputy head of the facility, believes it best that Dave remain off of active duty for the sake of his wellbeing, as well as that of any potential copilot.”

“Huh,” Karkat huffed, surprised. He’d known pilot candidates who had been barred from the cockpit due to trauma, but that had been back in the resistance, when people were rescued from mass culling sites or were escaping from drones. They’d suffered severe psychic injuries and been grounded, but that was Alternia. He couldn’t imagine a situation here on Earth that could affect a human to that extent.

“It is a great pity,” Equius intoned, his voice gruff but sympathetic. “When Nepeta and I first arrived at the Shatterdome he ran a few simulated drops with each of us in turn, and his abilities are first-rate. It would be an honor to fight alongside him in a true battle.”

“Definitely,” Nepeta beamed. “But he’s still great fun to have around!”

This time Karkat snorted. “Fun? That horse’s ass?”

“Again, despite his initial attitude, the younger Strider is most entertaining company,” Kanaya agreed. “On those rare occasions that we are off active alert, I have been witness to some truly amusing antics.”

“Oh, I miss the rap battles,” Feferi sighed. “They’re so fun!”

Karkat almost choked on his grubcake. “The what?”

“Dave’s a slam poet!” Nepeta chirped, beaming. “He throws down fierce rhymes.”

“It is a most enjoyable pastime,” Equius agreed. “He and I have gone toe-to-toe in the ancient troll art of slam poetry on many an occasion. I have bested him but once.”

Karkat blinked. Who the fuck even _was_ Dave Strider? “Do all of you realize that you live really fucked up lives?” he asked.

“Every single day,” came a voice from behind him.

Karkat turned around and found himself facing the dragon-headed tip of a long white cane, the hand holding it attached to the narrow-shouldered collection of sharp grins and sharper angles that was Ranger Terezi Pyrope. She looked a bit more put together than the first time he’d seen her, her red glasses perched comfortably on her nose and clashing violently with her Interspec fatigues.

She stuck out a hand. “Welcome to Interspec, new guy,” she said. “Terezi Pyrope.”

He shook her hand warily. Her long teal-painted claws matched her caste sign. “Karkat Vantas,” he said.

“So I’ve heard,” she leered down at him, something that would have been terrifying for him if he hadn’t been used to people looking down on him most of his life. “You’ve got quite the reputation, Mister Vantas. The prosecution is eager to see you in action.”

“The what now?” Karkat was nonplussed.

“Oooooh,” Nepeta giggled, leaning over the table. “‘The pouncellor furrociously agrees with the purrosecution!’”

“Nepeta,” Equius intoned warningly. “Do not roleplay at the dinner table, it is uncouth.”

Karkat laughed in spite of himself, bewildered as to what exactly was happening, but finding it entertaining nonetheless. “You two roleplay?”

“It helps pass the time between drops,” Terezi shrugged, taking the empty spot on the bench next to Karkat. “All work and no play makes for unhappy pilots.”

“You would know better than any of us, I suppose,” Kanaya mused, a sly smile on her face. “Considering what you usually define as ‘play’.”

“I don’t call it play, Kanaya,” Terezi grinned, folding up her cane and setting it down on the table beside her. Karkat couldn’t help but stare at her now that they were shoulder to shoulder. She really was blind. “Trust me, it has its fun moments, but vacillation is all work.”

“Ain’t it just?”

Karkat immediately felt his hackles rise at the sound of the new voice behind him, approaching from the buffet line. He turned and saw Terezi’s co-pilot approaching, carrying two trays of food with a lazy smirk on her face. If he had thought he’d taken an instant dislike to Dave earlier, it paled in comparison to his first up-close impression of Vriska Serket.

Terezi took one of the trays from Vriska as her co-pilot… kismesis?... sat down beside her. From what the others had said Karkat was pretty sure they were in spades at the moment. This was beyond weird, who just vacillated like that, and in public nonetheless? Sure, this wasn’t Alternia, but that didn’t make the situation any less unnerving to him.

Vriska leaned around Terezi as she set her tray down, giving Karkat a cursory up-and-down. “Oh hey,” her tone was almost bored. “It’s the new guy.”

“Vriska, this is Karkat,” Terezi said, giving the eyepatch-wearing troll an elbow to the ribcage. “Be nice.”

“I’m always nice,” she responded, flipping her hair in a careless way that set Karkat’s teeth on edge. “When people deserve it.”

“Efurryone deserves to be treated nicely,” Nepeta replied, looking a bit nervous. Karkat could already tell that she and Vriska did not see eye to eye.

“Sure, if you’re weak,” Vriska fixed Nepeta with a steely glare and the smaller troll flinched away, shuffling behind Equius, who scowled at her. “Niceness is a waste of time when there’s more important shit to focus on, like winning.”

“And justice,” Terezi added, giving Vriska a look. “Justice for everyone the horrorterrors have killed, and everyone still suffering in slavery back on Alternia.”

“Most definitely,” Feferi chimed in, smiling wide, though it didn’t quite meet her eyes, her restrained demeanour clearly directly related to her feelings towards Vriska. Karkat wondered if anyone liked the ceruleanblooded pilot, besides her co-pilot of course. “That is why all of us are here, after all.”

“Most of us,” Kanaya amended, her attention focused on her food, but even Karkat could see who she meant. The veiled hostility was mildly discomforting, even though it was standard operating procedure for most trolls.

“Whatever,” Vriska sniffed at Kanaya, digging into her food. “You and your little matesprit can play hero day in and day out, but we all know who the real powerhouse is here in the Shatterdome.”

“Vris,” Terezi sounded exasperated. “I just want to eat my fucking grubloaf, why do you always have to start shit?”

“I’m not starting shit, Rez,” Vriska replied, sniffing dismissively. “I’m just speaking the truth. Figured you’d be all about that, your Tyranny.”

“Maybe she would be if it _were_ the truth,” Karkat said, almost to himself.

The little group fell silent, and Karkat could feel their gaze settle on him. From the incensed look in Vriska’s one visible eye, he figured he’d spoken louder than he’d thought.

“Excuse me?” her voice was dangerously quiet, even predatory. “The fuck did you just say?”

“Vris,” Terezi put a hand on her co-pilot’s shoulder. Across from him Nepeta looked alarmed, scooting closer to Equius, who also look uncomfortable. Even Feferi and Kanaya were on edge.

Karkat put his fork down and folded his hands, fixing Vriska with a steely gaze. His digestion sac was in knots but he wasn’t going to let that show. After a lifetime of running and hiding combined with sweeps of fighting horrorterrors, he wasn’t going to be intimidated by Vriska Serket. “I said that maybe your co-pilot would be cool with you telling the truth if you actually were, Serket, but from where I’m sitting the powerhouse in this Shatterdome sure as fuck isn’t you.”

One of her hands, the robotic one, clenched reflexively around her cup, flattening it with a metallic creak. “I know you’re new here, Vantas, but you’re gonna have to learn the way that things work around here fast if you wanna keep up.”

“Is that right?” Karkat’s eyes narrowed. “And the way things work is you’re the strongest and most badass, is that what I’m getting here?”

“Obviously,” she flipped her hair again. “Rez and I are the best damn pilots in the Interspec program, and everybody knows it.”

Karkat snorted. “Oh yeah? What makes you two the best?”

Her gaze was still virulent, her smile displaying her sharp teeth. “ _Law and Order_ can fight the horrorterrors no matter what quadrant Terezi and I are in.”

“Good for you,” he sneered, not impressed. “So your relationship doesn’t hold you back from doing your fucking job. Congratulations. You’re competent. Doesn’t make you the best.”

Vriska shoved her food tray away from her and stood up, Terezi scrambling out of the way as her co-pilot towered over Karkat’s seated form. “You know what, Vantas, I wasn’t going to say anything to you today, you just arrived and you haven’t even been in your Jaeger yet, but you’ve got to understand one thing.”

Karkat stood up too, holding his ground even though the other pilot had a good eight inches on him. “And what’s that?” he said, folding his arms. “Enlighten me, Serket.”

“Everybody’s been telling me about the amazing resistance exploits of Ranger Karkat Vantas,” she sneered. “I remember you when we were going for the Breach, and you and your Juggalo moirail were pretty hot shit. But that was before you got him killed.”

Karkat saw red at the edges of his vision, his fists tightening. _Who the fuck does she think she is?_

“I’ve been fighting and killing horrorterrors nonstop for the past two and a half sweeps here on Earth,” she continued, her tone menacing and condescending. “I’ve watched countless civilians and my fellow pilots get torn to shreds, lost friends and teammates, and I’ve been the fucking _touchstone_ of this program. So I’ve been here and making shit happen for five earth years. Where the fuck exactly have you been?” She scoffed. “Working in construction? Talk about pathetic.”

His lip curled into a snarl. “Fuck you,” he hissed. “You don’t know a fucking thing about me and what I’ve been through.”

“You’re right,” she tossed her hair again. “And guess what? I don’t care. You’re a has-been mutant who’s dead weight for the Interspec program. Do us a favour and get the fuck out of the way so the rest of us can fight. You know, those of us who aren’t fucking quitters.”

He felt something catch his arm as he made a move to swing and he jerked around, seeing that Kanaya had grabbed him. How had she done that? She’d been on the other side of the table just a second ago. Her skin glowed a little brighter and he shook his head. Right. Rainbow drinker. He put his fist down, Kanaya letting go, and he stared Vriska down, his eyes narrowed. He wanted her to know he was furious, but no fucking way was he scared of her.

“It’s only quitting if you refuse to come back,” Karkat growled. “And you bet your ass I’m back.”

Vriska continued to glare at him, but he could tell her resolve was wavering. Other than Terezi, Karkat doubted she ever had to deal with people actually standing up to her. After a long moment she relented, uncrossing her arms and setting her hands on her hips. “Whatever,” she said. “If you slow me down, I’ll drop you like a sack of horrorterror shit.”

“Good luck trying to keep up,” Karkat snarled, his teeth clenched, as Vriska flipped her hair at him again and returned to her seat, Terezi joining her.

Kanaya had backed off slightly, but still regarded him with a look of concern. He nodded to her that he was okay but leaned down to pick up his tray nonetheless. He suddenly wasn’t hungry any more.

“You okay, Karkat?” Feferi asked, scowling at Vriska, who was ignoring both of them and vigorously digging into her food.

“Fine,” he said, holding up a hand to her. “Really, I’m just. Fuck, I’m tired. Think I’m gonna go turn in.” He adjusted his tray and addressed the rest of the group, who all looked somewhat subdued. “Thanks for talking with me. I’ll see you later.”

Karkat turned away from them and deposited his tray on the trash conveyor belt, crossing the mess hall as fast as his legs could carry him. As he stormed back towards his respiteblock, Vriska’s words echoed in his mind, her sneering voice bouncing around his thinkpan like a broken record, setting his teeth on edge and making his digestion sac churn.

_Where the fuck have you even been?_

_Pathetic._

_That was before you got him killed._

The door to his quarters swung shut behind him before he’d realized he’d basically ran all the way there, and as he pressed his back against the wall beside it he felt the beginning of a sob choke its way out of his throat.

“Fuck,” he whispered, grateful for the concrete between him and the rest of the Shatterdome, and he pressed one hand against his face, feeling tears burning behind his ganderbulbs. He fought against them, ignoring them, telling himself they were fucking pointless. Vriska was an asshole and Gamzee was dead and tears didn’t change any of that shit. Nothing did.

Wiping his face violently, he pushed himself off the wall and crossed over to his recuperacoon, the slime inside jiggling slightly as he approached. He felt sick, exhausted, and miserable, and the only glimmer of hope he could summon was the thought that maybe sleep would help.

The slime was cool against Karkat’s skin as he slid down into it, his clothes set in a slightly disheveled but folded pile on the shelf, and he sighed as he felt the tension in his muscles start to ease. Some combination of exhaustion and relief dragged him down away from consciousness, and he quickly fell into an uncomfortable sleep.

_They’re approaching the Breach. The auxiliary troop carriers dart forward like minnows in the deep water, and Karkat can see the readings on his viewscreen: the horrorterrors are coming, with a vengeance, and if they screw up even a fragment of this plan, put a hair out of place, their Assault will completely collapse._

_“All Mechth prepare for contact,” he can hear Sollux’s voice in his ear. “Hitting the Breach in ten thecondth.”_

_He looks to his right, Gamzee’s face split in a frightening grin. Karkat knows he’s thinking back to his trials back in the brooding caverns, blood spattered on walls that he could use to paint pictures to match his face. He knows this because the Drift holds no secrets, just as Gamzee knows about his escape from the first round of culling drones a sweep ago, the loss of his lusus, the brief stint he’d spent on a highblood ship as a slave._

_They’re from the same planet, but two different worlds, and somehow despite all that they understand each other, and Gamzee looks back at him, his manic smile shifting into one that Karkat finds reassuring._

_“Ready to save the motherfuckin’ troll race, brother?”_

_He sets his jaw, smiling back, the thrill of battle and the bravado of actually being a pilot gripping him, holding him securely. “Hell fucking yes.”_

_They storm the Breach, horrorterrors falling in their wake, all systems go, his existence a symphony of death cries and battle calls. Other teams fall, other pilots snapped into the jaws of the monsters chasing them down, but_ Miracle _is relentless. They survive, just like they always do, Karkat and Gamzee, the pair the other pilots sometimes called the Miracrails. The highest landdwelling blood caste in diamonds with a mutant. Nobody knew how to handle it except by being in awe._

_Karkat is proud. They should be in fucking awe of him. Everyone should, even the fucking Condesce. He is unstoppable._

_He turns to Gamzee again, his expression triumphant, but his bloodpusher stops as his moirail’s face suddenly freezes, the wide grin sliced across with jagged clawmarks. Karkat reaches out a hand for him, screaming, as Gamzee’s mouth erupts with blood, thick and purple and pouring down onto the floor, filling the cockpit. He chokes as it surrounds him, mixing with the salty earth seawater, the acid of horrorterror blood, all of it eating away at him, shrivelling his flesh and chewing at his bones. All he sees is Gamzee’s face, his eyes vacant and glassy, limbs splayed between the horrorterror’s teeth. All around him he hears the sickening roar in his ears, the echoing voice of his moirail screaming in his mind._

_YOU LEFT ME BEHIND BROTHER._

“Gamz- _hlguglgh_.” Karkat tried to yell but his mouth filled with sopor. He jerked up out of the recuperacoon and hung over the side, coughing green slime and groaning as he cling to the edge, disoriented. He’d inhaled some of the liquid and he dragged himself out onto the floor, hitting it with a wet slap, and he pulled himself to his feet just long enough to stumble to the load gaper in the corner, which he vomited into noisily.

Slumping down to the floor once he was sure he’d gotten everything out of his system, he mourned the loss of the first good meal he’d had in sweeps. It hurt less to focus on that then Gamzee’s empty face, which seemed to hover constantly just beyond his consciousness. Everything tasted of acid and his head swam, the tile floor cool on his cheek despite how much the rest of him still felt like it was being burned, devoured by blood and salt.

He focused on breathing in and out, wheezing slightly against the floor until his head stopped spinning. He should have expected this, of course the nightmares were going to get worse the second he agreed to get back in a Mech. Between that and Vriska’s bullshit at dinner, he was amazed the dream had even started off good.

He got to his feet shakily, leaning against the wall and groaning. He felt like he’d just been run through a meat grinder, and a glance in the mirror told him that he looked absolutely wretched. Running a hand through his hair, he glanced at the digital time readout by the desk which read 0300.

“Great,” he muttered, his throat still burning. No point in going back to sleep, not when he had co-pilot candidacy trials in three hours. He leaned over to the shelf and grabbed his clothes, pulling on pants and a tank top and digging a ratty towel out of the closet. Hopefully a trip to the ablution block would clear the worst of the dreams from his thinkpan.

Stepping out into the hallway and pulling his door closed, Karkat was startled to notice that the door across the hall from him, Dave’s door, was ajar. Cool blue light shone through the gap, but a cursory glance as he passed it indicated that the room was empty.

It wasn’t that strange for Dave not to be in his room at this time of morning, of course it wasn’t from what every other member of the team had said, the guy was flushed for his job. Not that he could blame him: Karkat knew how to pilot a Mech like nobody’s business, but he didn’t have the first clue about constructing them. Logically it was a time-consuming occupation, especially when paired with other duties around the Shatterdome. It seemed both the Striders had a tendency towards being workaholics.

Karkat stepped into the ablution block and immediately heard that the communal space already had at least one occupant. There was water running, interspersed with the occasional soft noise, what could be mistaken for a cough but he could tell was more of a sob.

He considered leaving and coming back later - he knew better than anyone that being discovered in the midst of a moment of emotional weakness was beyond shitty - but he needed to wash the nightmares out of his mind and the acid taste out of his mouth, so instead he decided to make himself as known as possible, stepping heavier and rattling against the sinks with his claws.

The sobbing stopped, nothing left in the ablution block but the sound of running water. Karkat looked at the curtain-covered stalls and noticed the pile of clothes next to the occupied space. He froze when he saw the dark aviator shades perched on top of the fuzzy red towel.

Before he could say anything he heard the water shut off and saw a ghost white hand reach around the curtain, first grabbing the shades and then the towel. Karkat immediately busied himself with one of the sinks, turning both faucets on full blast and starting to splash water on his face, hanging his towel around his neck and keeping his eyes averted. If he made the effort to look as bad as he felt, Dave might believe that he hadn’t noticed the sounds coming from the ablution stall. Karkat still thought he was an arrogant jackass, but that didn’t mean he should take advantage of his moment of weakness. The guy was in charge of restoring his Jaeger, for fuck’s sake, they’d be working together for the foreseeable future, so it’d make more sense to try and stay on his good side.

Karkat’s face was parallel to the sink when he heard Dave’s intake of breath as he left the stall, clearly surprised to see him. Karkat leaned up carefully, committed to looking surprised despite his foreknowledge of Dave’s presence, but the sight of the human turned this committed facade into genuine shock.

It wasn’t that he’d never seen humans before - sweeps in communal living spaces working on the Wall had taken care of that - but he had never seen a human that was so incredibly _pale_. Dave was wearing the pants of his fatigues but had left his shirt off, displaying a torso that was muscle-toned and patterned with spidery veins. He looked so _fragile_ , Karkat could practically see the blood pumping through him. Two crescent-shaped horizontal scars curved directly under the weird flesh protrusions all humans had on their chests, and his cheeks coloured slightly, a flood of red against white, and he adjusted his towel so it covered them, clearly self-conscious.

“Mornin’,” Dave said stiffly, his voice thick-sounding. Karkat’s suspicions about what he had been doing in the ablution stall were confirmed then, but he didn’t indicate he could tell. Dave’s lips quirked up slightly, though it was barely a fraction of the smug grin he usually sported. “What’s the matter, you never seen an albino before?”

Karkat scowled. “No, actually,” he said, his voice rough after how sick he’d been earlier.

Dave shrugged. Fair enough.” He picked at a loose thread on his towel for a moment before speaking again. “It’s early as shit. Couldn’t sleep?”

Karkat shook his head, turning back to the sink and splashing more water on his face. “New place,” he grunted. “Sleep’s not gonna happen.”

“Fair,” Dave said, adjusting his shades and dancing from side to side slightly, clearly anxious. “Know the feeling, ‘cept it keeps happenin’ to me in old places.” His voice sounded different, his accent less formal and with a kind of smooth twang in it Karkat hadn’t noticed when they’d first met.

Karkat wiped the water off of his face with his towel, surprised at how much better he already felt. At least he was recovering quickly. “Mm,” he grunted, unsure of what to say, aware of the tension between them. After all, their last conversation had been less than friendly.

“Ready to meet your co-pilot candidates?” Dave asked, still shifting anxiously.

Karkat nodded, curt, knowing he should say something. “As I’ll ever be,” he managed.

Dave nodded back. “Cool,” he said, adjusting his towel again. Karkat wondered why he was so self-conscious about the scars on his chest, but didn’t press the issue as the human stepped around him, heading for the door. A moment of silence passed before he heard Dave say: “Uh, hey, Karkat?”

Karkat hadn’t been expecting him to talk again, and he turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised. “What?”

Dave was paused in the doorway, one foot out in the hall, his towel now slung over one shoulder. Karkat couldn’t read his expression through the dark eyewear, but his mouth curved down hesitantly, like there was something he wanted to say. The moment passed, and he shook his head. “Nothin’,” he waved a hand, dismissing himself. “I’ll see you in the trainin’ room.”

“See you,” Karkat grunted, turning back to the sink and adjusting the faucets until they were off. By the time he’d picked up his towel, Dave was gone, his unspoken statement still hanging in the space he’d vacated.

Staring at the spot blankly for a moment, Karkat vaguely wondered if the insufferable prick had actually been about to apologize.


	6. Hit 'Em Right Between The Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to [callmearcturus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/callmearcturus/pseuds/callmearcturus) because she's been waiting for this scene since I first mentioned I was writing a Pacific Rim fusion AU. Hope it's everything you dreamed of.

_Slowly out of line_  
_And drifting closer in your sights_  
_So play it out I’m wide awake_  
_It’s a scene about me_  
_There’s something in your way_  
_And now someone is gonna pay_  
_And if you can’t get what you want_  
_Well it’s all because of me_

_Now dance, fucker, dance_  
_Man, I never had a chance_  
_And no one even knew_  
_It was really only you_  
_And now you’ll lead the way_  
_Show the light of day_  
_Nice work you did_  
_You’re gonna go far, kid_  
\-- From ‘You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid’ by The Offspring  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DTLcR5awn0))

__

Candidate trials began at 0600 sharp, and Dave’s bitterness was at an all time high. The half-dozen human co-pilot candidates, most of them local cadets from around the Hong Kong area, were all as eager to get in the ring as Karkat wasn’t, the troll entering the training room looking like he was on a visit to the goddamn dentist.

A small crowd had gathered near the doors, consisting mostly of the new Jaeger’s engineers, a few LOCCENT officers (John and Sollux among them), and all of the current pilots. Dave could see them in a cluster to the side, Feferi towering over the rest of the crowd while Terezi and Vriska leaned against the wall near them, muttering to each other conspiratorially. Rose and Jade were near the front, Kanaya with her hand on the former’s shoulder, and Nepeta had climbed up on Equius’s shoulders to get a better view. Dave wasn’t surprised to see them there. Karkat’s reputation preceded him, but nobody had seen him spar in person, so the group buzzed and murmured with excitement as the trials started.

Dave held his clipboard stiffly as he watched the troll step onto the mat, barefoot and wearing his fatigues, holding a curved sickle in each hand. A couple of the pilot candidates looked intimidated as they selected their own weapons, and Dave repressed an eyeroll behind his shades. If they’d actually done their homework, nothing about Karkat’s weapons of choice should be a surprise to them.

Dirk stood beside him on the steps near the back of the training room, hands behind his back as he surveyed the scene, impassive. He gave the first candidate, a young man with close-cropped hair and a sword, a nod, and the guy charged forward onto the mat, swinging with reckless abandon.

Dave watched Karkat move, his curiosity overtaking his bitterness. He’d watched footage of the troll piloting a Mech, but seeing him spar was a different matter, and Karkat’s style was unique. He took the first candidate down easily, disarming him in four moves and slamming him face-first into the mat with an elbow. _It could have been faster_ , Dave thought as he observed Karkat’s technique. The troll was lightyears ahead of these guys, but he took them down almost casually, like he didn’t care.

He probably didn’t.

Dave huffed out a breath and made a note on his clipboard. “Four hits to zero,” he said, knowing his tone was acidic but feeling no urge to hide it. If Karkat was going to be sloppy, he was going to be bitter.

On Dirk’s nod the second candidate, an eager woman with her hair in a ponytail, darted forward with a quarterstaff, whirling it through the air in controlled swings. After she swung and connected with a vulnerable spot, Karkat caught the solid wood easily with his twin sickles, using it to drag her down to the mat with a grunt.

“Four hits to one,” Dave sighed, making another note, as the growing crowd of onlookers applauded.

He thought he noticed Karkat giving him a dirty look as he spoke, but he ignored it, not caring if the troll saw his attitude. Maybe it would make him give a fuck. Dirk nodded and the third candidate stepped forward, his weapon of choice a polearm. As he advanced Karkat countered, the two of them almost dancing around the mat for a split-second before the candidate attacked, swinging and letting out controlled yells as Karkat blocked, repeating the motion again and then once more until Karkat disarmed him, sending the polearm clattering across the floor and flipping the candidate backwards through the air before bringing him down hard, leaving him slightly dazed.

“Four hits to two,” Dave made another note, knowing he looked unimpressed. No reason he shouldn’t look that way, he _was_ unimpressed. This was co-pilot selection, not a warm-up, and Karkat was sparring like this was a waste of his time.

The troll’s head snapped up at Dave’s words and he advanced on him, walking to the edge of the mat with his sickles gripped loosely in his hands. “Okay,” he growled, pointing one of the weapons at Dave. “Just what the _fuck_ is up with you?”

Dave’s eyebrows shot up. Karkat’s outburst was the most passion the troll had shown since he’d stepped into the ring. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You don’t like these chucklefucks?” He waved his other sickle at the recently defeated co-pilot candidates. “I thought they were hand picked by you?”

“Yeah?” Dave went on the defensive but he wasn’t angry. If anything, he was glad. Finally, Karkat was showing him something besides apathy. “So?”

“Every time I take one of them down you make this…” he waved his sickle again, tilting his head to one side and dropping his lips into a pout. “... Face. Like you’re critical, like their performance isn’t fucking good enough.”

Dave snorted, lowering his clipboard. “Trust me,” he said. “It’s not their performance I’m critical of.”

Karkat’s eyebrows quirked, eyes narrowing. “Then whose performance _are_ you critical of, fuckass?”

“It’s yours, dipshit,” Dave shot back, adrenalin flooding him. “You could have taken all three of those cadets down two moves earlier. You’re holding back.”

Karkat scoffed, tipping his chin at Dave. There was a kind of fire behind his eyes, and finally Dave felt something like hope. “You think so, Strider?”

“Oh,” Dave’s mouth quirked up into a smile. “I know so.”

“Please,” the troll’s tone was now condescending. “You think you can do any better, desk-jockey?”

“You bet your ass I can, has-been,” Dave shot back.

Karkat look furious, but instead of yelling he took a step back, sizing him up, then shifted slightly to look at Dirk. “Fuck it,” he said. “You wanna go, human? Then we’re gonna fucking go.” He pointed a sickle at Dave, still addressing Dirk. “How about we put _him_ in the ring?”

Dave was suddenly standing to attention, his clipboard tight against his chest. Shit, he hadn’t thought Karkat would actually take his bait. This wasn’t just sparring, this was candidate tryouts for being a fucking Jaeger pilot, so Karkat wouldn’t be doing this unless he was serious. He glanced at Dirk beside him, whose mouth had compressed into a thin line.

His brother shook his head. “Not happening,” he said. “The cadet list is final, Ranger. Only candidates with Drift compatibility are eligible for the trials.”

“Dir-Deputy Marshal,” Dave heard himself speak, his stomach suddenly a pit of writhing snakes. “I _am_ Drift compatible.”

Dirk’s head turned sharply as he stared at his brother. When he spoke his voice was very quiet. “Just _how_ would you know that, Officer Strider?”

“I used my brain scan to run the diagnostics on the new Jaeger,” he said, hating how quiet his voice had suddenly gotten. When Dirk spoke in that tone it reminded him of … he shook it off. “The scan returned with full compatibility to Ranger Vantas’s scan.”

Dirk scowled. “Which you weren’t supposed to be looking for. Why would you even want to participate in the trial? You and Ranger Vantas have been fighting like cats and dogs since he set foot in the Shatterdome.”

“Thought the point of this shit was to find the best co-pilot for the job, Dirk,” Karkat said, his eyes now fixed on Dave. “Not who I was sharing the disease of friendship with. I’m not here for a new moirail, I’m here to fight horrorterrors, for fuck’s sake. Shouldn’t I be doing that with the best fucking candidate you have?”

Dave broke Karkat’s gaze and turned to his brother. Dirk’s frown deepened, then he shifted to address Dave directly, his voice less quiet and tinged with a concern that somehow made the conversation that much more frustrating. “It’s not just about the neural scans, Dave,” he said. “It’s about a physical compatibility, that’s why we run these trials.”

“So let’s give it a fucking shot, Dirk,” he hissed. He leveled his gaze at his brother, trying not to plead, trying to focus on projecting his determination, his confidence. “You know I’ve got the chops. I’m ready for this.”

Over on the mat Dave saw Karkat shift, holding both sickles in one hand and placing the other on his hip, his red eyes like hot coals against his grey skin. “What’s the matter, Deputy Marshal?” His voice was dangerously low and taunting, his mouth dragging into a smirk. “I thought Dave Strider was your best and brightest. Don’t think he can take me on?”

Beside him Dave felt Dirk stiffen, saw his eyes narrow. Dave recognized that look, it was the same look his brother gave pilots when they were talking shit, the look he gave Sollux when he’d get caught smuggling in contraband. It was a look that meant that someone had sassed him up, the game was on, and shit was about to get wrecked.

Dirk turned to study Dave and he recognized that look too, even through his brother’s anime shades. If he’d had his camera with him he’d have snapped a picture and put it up on the Shatterdome intranet with the caption ‘kick his ass baby, I got your flower.’ Dirk Strider jerked his head gently towards the mat and took Dave’s clipboard out of his hands. “Go,” he said, and that was all Dave needed.

Stepping out of his boots and peeling off his jacket, Dave tried hard to keep his breathing even. Getting excited about actually going through a candidate trial wouldn’t help him succeed, after all. He left his gear on the side of the mat as he crossed to the rack of training weapons, selecting his preferred blade, a long medieval-style sword, with a critical eye.

He turned back to Karkat and saw the troll eyeing him, giving him the same scrutiny Dave had seen him afford the Jaeger on their tour. His gaze bored into him, trying to dissect him, and Dave didn’t falter, staring right back through his aviators.

“Four hits marks a win,” Dirk said, Dave noticing his grip was tight on the clipboard. He tried to ignore it. His brother could worry about him on their own time, now he had to concentrate.

Dave and Karkat both stepped into position, taking opposite sides of the mat after passing each other at the center point. As they crossed, Karkat spoke, a sickle in each hand and his eyes still burning.

“Don’t get too eager to kick my ass, Strider,” he growled. “The whole point of this is to test compatibility. We’re having a dialogue, not a beat down.”

“I know how candidate trials work, douchebag,” Dave replied, the adrenalin back and coursing through him. He could feel everyone’s eyes trained on him, and he channelled all of his nervous energy into a sharp point, focusing it on the feel of the sword in his grip. “I just hope you’ll actually make an effort this time.”

He heard Karkat growl behind him as he reached the end of the mat, turning to see the troll glaring at him, sickles raised. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice as combative as his stance. “I’m not going to hold anything back.”

Dave smiled darkly and raised his sword. “Good,” he said. “Neither am I.”

He advanced to the center of the mat first, starting off in a defensive stance, and Karkat followed, his moves slow and slightly fluid. Dave could see the coiled tension in his muscles, the control, and he steadied himself, aware of every millimeter of movement the troll made. As he watched, Karkat’s sickles suddenly flashed and the troll darted forward, impossibly fast for his size, and instantly one sickle had hooked onto his sword while the other was trained right between Dave’s eyes.

Karkat smirked. “One-zero.”

Dave took advantage of Karkat’s victory to get his own, ducking back to loosen his weapon from the sickle and swinging it around in a high arc, the blade singing through the air and stopping millimeters from the tip of Karkat’s nose. Dave’s smirk mirrored the troll’s. “One-one.”

He stepped back, lowering his sword as Karkat advanced again, one sickle feinting up for Dave to try and block while the other swung down to stop at his ribcage. Karkat’s smirk deepened. “Two-one,” he growled. “Concentrate, Strider.”

They both stepped back, Dave bringing his sword up with intent, and the troll advanced in a whirl of sickles, letting out a grunt of effort. Dave blocked and parried, sending Karkat countering back across the mat and advancing, his sword swinging to clash with the sickles once, twice, three times, before Karkat was back on the offense, causing Dave to shuffle backwards. With a grunt of his own, Dave brought his blade high to curve around in a feint, making Karkat swing to counter, and then stop as the sword halted inches from his shoulder. He glared as Dave grinned. “Two-two,” he breathed. “Guess you’d better watch it.”

Karkat growled again but didn’t say anything as the two of them both stepped back again, repositioning their weapons without breaking their gaze. The troll went on the offensive once again, bringing both sickles up this time and causing Dave to block wide, sword high over his head. He came back strong, breaking away from the curving blades and darting around low, taking advantage of his smaller stature. He took a swing at Karkat’s legs, which the troll dodged carefully and responded to with a whirling offense, spinning in an almost dance-like move on the balls of his feet to clash against Dave’s sword four times in rapid succession.

Dave staggered back, but recovered quickly, swinging his sword first high and then low so Karkat had to drop down rapidly, rolling in a blur of sharp sickles and grey limbs. He came up in a crouch just in time for Dave to bring his blade down and hold it directly in front of Karkat’s face.

Behind him he heard some of the onlookers applaud quietly, pretty sure he could hear John letting out a small cheer for him, and he smirked down at Karkat. “Three-two,” he said, slightly breathless. Karkat looked up at him and the fire in his eyes seemed to have lessened, replaced simply with a determined focus. This was what Dave had been looking for. This was the pilot that had assaulted the Breach all those years ago. He’d been in there all along, he’d just needed some convincing that it was worth it to appear.

As he stepped back and Karkat countered, he heard his brother behind him, his tone cautionary. “More control, Officer Strider,” he said. “Don’t get cocky.”

Dave resisted the urge to flip Dirk off, focusing on going on the offensive for this round. He swung high and hard, a gasp of effort leaving him, and he and Karkat stood in a deadlock as the troll’s sickles blocked his attack. As he broke free, Karkat managed to get his shoulder under Dave’s arm, sending him sprawling onto the mat with a flip and a grunt. His sword was wrenched from his hand and sent sliding across and out of reach, and as he rolled to get back on his feet Karkat’s sickles were suddenly at his throat. The troll grinned at him, clearly satisfied. He didn’t mention that their score was now three to three. He didn’t have to. Neither of them needed to speak.

Glancing across the mat at his abandoned sword, Dave considered making a roll to grab it, but stopped when Karkat took a few steps back and abandoned his own weapons, dropping the sickles to raise his arms up, forming his hands into fists. Dave’s mouth quirked up in a smile. They were changing things up. Good. That was how he liked it.

Dave brought his own fists up and wasted no time, swinging for Karkat’s face and bracing against the anticipated block. The two of them moved in circles, swinging and blocking, ducking and weaving, Dave crouching low to avoid Karkat’s fists and Karkat jumping to avoid the sweeping kicks Dave made with his legs. Around him Dave could hear the crowd murmuring, the tension around them as high as the tension between them. Karkat caught him in a brief headlock to bring the match to a solid four-three but before Dirk could call time Dave freed himself and ducked low once more. Seeing an opening, he grabbed one of Karkat’s legs, bringing him down to the mat in a controlled fall without letting go. Karkat let out a surprised gasp as Dave rolled with him, righting himself and coming up with the troll’s leg trapped between his arm and his thigh, holding him in a firm pin.

The two of them locked eyes for a moment, Karkat’s expression almost confused but still underlaid with determined hostility, even some level of fascination. It was like he could somehow tell that Dave’s expression mirrored his own, even through the shades.

He knew they were thinking the same thing. They were evenly matched.

“Enough,” Dave heard Dirk’s voice across the mat and he relented, letting Karkat go and getting to his feet so he could give his brother a salute. Karkat stood up more slowly, the crowd around them applauding as he dusted himself off and gave Dave a sharp look as he stood beside him, panting slightly. He wasn’t angry any more, but energized, just as Dave was. Dirk’s expression looked stern. “I’ve seen everything I need to see.”

“Yeah?” Karkat gave the Deputy Marshal a slight sneer. “Well, so have I. If anyone’s gonna be my co-pilot, it’s this fucker.”

Dave started, the crowd falling silent. He turned to look at the troll, who seemed disgruntled but holding firm, confident in his assertion. He couldn’t argue with Karkat’s assessment. After all, he’d never been in a sparring match that close in all his years of training. He was pretty sure Karkat hadn’t either. It took Dave back to the day he’d watched Rose go up against Kanaya during their trials, the two of them going four-for-four with Rose winning by the narrowest of margins. That was the only other time he’d seen a match this close.

“That’s not gonna work, Ranger Vantas,” Dirk said, and Dave felt his adrenalin drop right along with his stomach. Fuck. He should have known Dirk would pull the fucking rug out from under him like this.

Beside him Karkat took a step forward, his fists clenched and face in a tight scowl. “What? Why the fuck not?”

“Because I said so,” Dirk snapped, his voice suddenly razor sharp and cutting through the noise of the crowd, driving them all to silence. “Mister Vantas, I’ve made my decision, and it is final. Report to the main Shatterdome in two hours, and find out who your co-pilot will be.”

“This is bullshit,” Karkat growled, looking down at Dave again, waving one of his hands indignantly. “Tell him it’s bullshit!”

Dave looked at Karkat, the snakes in his stomach back with a vengeance. He felt his entire spirit sag, mentally kicking himself for even bothering to hope, for even thinking for a second that anything he did to prove himself would fucking matter. He looked back to Dirk, who nodded at him before turning on his heel and marching towards the exit, and knew it was no use.

Dave felt his cheeks flood with a blush as the crowd began to disperse. He’d felt humiliated before, but somehow this had hit a whole new level. Karkat still stood staring at the spot Dirk had just vacated, probably trying to process what the fuck had just happened. “Fuck,” the troll whispered, his voice hoarse, and Dave found that he agreed.

Shuffling across the mat to pick up his boots and his jacket, Dave kept his gaze firmly fixed on the ground, heading for the exit so fast he almost plowed right into Vriska, who sneered at him and muttered: “Nice work being useless, cooldouche.”

“Fuck off,” he mumbled, shoving past her and heading away from the training room, his eyes stinging. Maybe if he got out of there fast enough, if he made it back to his quarters, he could slam the door and shut himself away and that would leave this feeling of hopelessness and anger behind.

If he did it hard enough, maybe he could stop feeling so goddamn disappointed in himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to send a little love and a shitload of thanks to everyone who's been reading and leaving kudos and comments, because I seriously appreciate everything y'all say and do. I'm so glad other people enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it. 
> 
> Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you next Thursday!


	7. The Fear Of Falling Apart

_This is gospel for the vagabonds,_  
_Ne'er-do-wells and insufferable bastards_  
_Confessing their apostasies_  
_Led away by imperfect impostors_

_Oh, this is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart…_

_Don’t try to sleep through the end of the world_  
_And bury me alive_  
_'Cause I won’t give up without a fight_  
\-- From ‘This Is Gospel’ by Panic! At the Disco  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crwE3Tw_k0Q))

__

It took Karkat a couple of moments to get his bearings before he realized Dave had stormed out of the training room. His own thinkpan was brimming with questions, his bloodpusher still pounding and emotions still rocketing from confusion to anger to exhilaration to disappointment.

As he took off running after Dave his mind still whirled with jumbled queries, wondering what the fuck had just happened? He’d started it, sure, he’d been the one to throw down the gauntlet, but he hadn’t expected Strider to step up, hadn’t expected them to go head to head in a sparring match that ended up a perfect four-to-four. He’d never been through a trial like that, with someone who matched his moves so perfectly with their own. Never, not even when he and Gamzee…

His digestion sac twisted and he stumbled around the corner, almost reaching his respiteblock before catching up with Dave, who was walking quickly towards his own quarters, head bowed and shoulders visibly shaking.

“Strider!” he called, shoving past unsuspecting engineers and other passersby, who quickly gave him a wide berth. “Fuck, Strider. _Dave_!”

He stopped and turned at the sound of his first name, face still mostly blocked by his horseshit eyewear. A twinge of emotion Karkat had seen on Dave’s face at first glance quickly vanished, replaced with a blank stoicism that set his teeth on edge. “Sup,” Dave intoned, his voice cracking a little. One of his boots was untied, he’d clearly been in one fuck of a hurry to get out of there, and as Karkat approached he backed towards the nearest door, almost looking like a cornered animal.

“Don’t ‘sup’ me, coolkid,” he growled, getting up in his face. “Why the fuck did you run off like that?”

“Match was over,” Dave shrugged, clearly rattled but not backing down, his eyes still invisible through his shades. “Dirk put his foot down. I left.”

“I don’t give a shit if he put his walkstub down, Dave, what the fuck _was_ that in there?” he narrowed his eyes, waiting for any sign, any tell, anything that indicated Dave was going to waver.

Dave didn’t waver. “What was what?” he shrugged, and Karkat resisted the urge to grind his teeth together. “We sparred. It happened.”

“It more than happened, shitsponge,” he snapped. “It _Happened_. I felt it, I know you felt it too.”

Dave’s face was impassive, but Karkat could see a hint of red in his cheeks. “Didn’t feel shit,” he said, his words a hiss through his own clenched teeth.

“Fuck you, don’t lie,” Karkat snarled, his blood pounding in his aural cavities, his fists clenched. “There’s Drift compatibility and then there’s going a perfect four-for-four in the ring, tell me you’ve never seen that shit go down before!”

He shrugged again. “Once,” he admitted. “Only once.”

“Then you know it wasn’t nothing,” he folded his arms across his chest. “Look I know you think I’m an asshole, and you know I think you’re a fucking prick, but this isn’t about us, it’s about the fate of the fucking universe, and if we’re that compatible, we need to fucking talk about it!”

Dave took another step back, his back practically against the door, and he sighed. “Look, Karkat, I appreciate you standing up for me back there,” he said. His voice was weary, more like he’d just wrestled a horrorterror than tied in a sparring match. “But there’s nothing to talk about.”

He turned his back on Karkat and began fussing with the door’s pneumatic wheel. Karkat waited a moment before raising an eyebrow and addressing him in a quiet voice. “Dave?”

“ _What_ ,” Dave spat without turning around, visibly flustered.

“That’s my room.”

Dave froze, his head jerking up slightly, and Karkat held in a laugh. Dave was clearly more thrown off by the situation than he was. He whipped around and shoved past Karkat, his face bright red, to go to his own door, turning the wheel and pulling it open.

“You know, I was under the impression that you wanted to be a pilot, Strider,” he barked across the hall as Dave made to shut himself in his room. “Why are you backing down from that?”

“It’s not my call, Karkat,” Dave snarled, his voice high and shaky. “If the Deputy Marshal won’t clear me for duty, then that’s the end of the fucking story.”

“I know he’s your brother,” he replied, his own voice just as cutting and angry. “I don’t care if family isn’t a troll thing, I know what that shit means to humans, but just because you have that blood link with him doesn’t mean you have to just jump when he tells you to jump!”

Dave’s face darkened slightly and his lips pursed. He said nothing.

Karkat was amazed at how desperate he suddenly felt, how much he meant what he was saying. He couldn’t stand this asshole, he was beyond fed up with his shit and they’d met less than twenty-four hours ago, but he knew what he was doing here, he’d been here before, and when the universe presented you with an opportunity, you had to fucking take it, and to hell with the personality clashing that was clearly inevitable.

His mind flashed back to his first impression of Gamzee, the Faygo-swilling clown idiot who’d knocked him over the head with a juggling club and listened to Karkat scream in his face for a full minute before laughing and shuffling away. Contention and compatibility were far from mutually exclusive, and as much as he wanted to disbelieve this situation he was in, he had felt a connection, a strong one, to Dave fucking Strider, and it was the kind of connection he needed if he was going to set foot in a cockpit again without breaking the fuck down.

“You don’t have to just obey him,” he said, setting his jaw, eyes locked on Dave as he stood in the middle of the deserted hallway. “I don’t know why the fuck you do.”

Dave sucked in a breath, looking away down the hall. “It’s not about obeying him,” he said, his voice low. “It’s about respect.”

He made to close the door and Karkat took another step forward, his anger getting the best of him yet again. “At least tell me what he’s so fucked up about,” he said, his voice bouncing around the hallway. “Why the fuck won’t he let you be a pilot? What _happened_ to you?”

A deep sadness shadowed Dave’s features, just for a second, before he stepped back into his room, pulling his door shut and leaving Karkat alone with his anger.

He stood there in silent for about thirty seconds, just staring at Dave’s closed door, before clenching his fist and growling “FUCK” into the echoing tunnel of the hallway. Turning away, Karkat stomped across and dragged his own door open, pulling it shut with a loud creak behind him.

He stood in the dim light of his room for a moment, scowling at nothing in particular. His mind kept bouncing back to the candidate trials he’d gone through sweeps ago, the way he and Gamzee had met in a clash of clubs and sickles and come away pilots, the cockpit they had shared, the moirallegiance he had lost.

Karkat wasn’t sure he believed the old troll ideal that each member of his species only got one shot in each quadrant, but the absence of Gamzee in his life made him truly wonder if their pale relationship had been destined. He couldn’t think of anyone who could come even close to replacing him. He frowned reflexively, thinking about Dave. Especially not that douchebag human.

Again, he knew the pale feelings didn’t just appear the second you and your co-pilot were matched up, but the more Karkat thought about it the more he had trouble believing he could ever be in diamonds with such a stubborn horse’s ass, especially one that was a different species, for fuck’s sake.

Other quadrants were completely out of the question, he thought as he pulled his shirt off and settled in his desk chair, booting up his battered husktop. Even removing the fact that he still had trouble wrapping his head around the fact that it was even possible for pilots to Drift as anything but moirails, he had trouble seeing Dave fitting anywhere in that respect. Red was a hard no, easily, much the same as pale was. He couldn’t see Dave in an ashen arrangement, both because he was human and because he was an insensitive fuckhead, and even as he pondered black romance he shook his head. Dave was attractive, by human standards, but the urge Karkat had to slam his face into a wall felt purely platonic.

His husktop made a soft chirping noise and he glanced at the screen, seeing a flashing notification in a corner. He’d had Trollian installed on the machine for sweeps, but hadn’t received messages from anyone on it since he’d come to Earth. He’d assumed the client was completely defunct on this side of the Breach, but apparently it functioned within the Shatterdome network, and he was receiving a message. He clicked on it, eyebrows going up when he saw the details. It was Sollux.

\-- twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] at 0711 --

TA: holy 2hiit KK  
TA: The la2t tiime i 2aw a candiidate triial that clo2e wa2 when Kanaya piicked Ro2e for her co-piilot  
CG: I CAN’T TELL IF YOU’RE TRYING TO BE REASSURING OR A FUCKING ASSHOLE  
TA: Nah man  
TA: iim liike  
TA: Genuiinely blown away by thii2   
TA: I knew 2triider2 2iim 2core2 were good, and ii knew you two had compatiibiiliity but holy 2hiit   
CG: I STILL WANNA CALL BULLSHIT ON THAT  
CG: HE’S SUCH A FUCKING ASSHOLE, HOW THE FUCK AM I THAT COMPATIBLE WITH *HIM*?  
TA: ii diidnt beliieve iit eiither KK tru2t me. Nobody know2 2triider2 iin2ufferable priickii2hne22 a2 well a2 I do, but the neural 2can2 dont liie. That 2hiit i2 off the 2cale2.  
CG: …  
CG: DO YOU STILL HAVE THOSE SCANS?  
TA: Theyre part of the per22onell file2. Tho2e are on the encrypted 2erver2. Only the mar2hal and deputy mar2hal have offiiciial acce22   
CG: … SOLLUX  
TA: what  
CG: STOP BULLSHITTING AND SEND ME THE FILES, I KNOW YOU CAN HACK ANY SYSTEM IN PARADOX SPACE  
TA: are you tryiing to get me fiired?  
CG: YOU’RE THE BEST LOCCENT OFFICER IN PARADOX SPACE ON TOP OF YOUR ‘LEET HAXXOR SKILLZ’, YOU KNOW THEY WON’T FIRE YOU, STOP FUCKING AROUND, I WANNA SEE THE DAMN SCANS  
CG: AND THE REST OF THE FILES WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, STRIDER IS A FUCKING ENIGMA I’M CLEARLY NEVER GOING TO SOLVE WITHOUT SOME HELP  
TA: he really got your earth goat didnt he?  
TA: Or ha2 he managed to become the object of another 2hatterdome troll2 black fanta2ie2?  
CG: FUCK OFF, I’M JUST CURIOUS  
CG: AND KEEP YOUR SPADES CRUSH ON STRIDER TO YOURSELF, THAT SHIT IS UNCOMFORTABLE AS FUCK FOR EVERYONE  
TA: not everyone, kk, ju2t you  
TA: 2ending fiile2 now  
TA: TA sent kksspadescrush.pdf and kksfuckedupbrain.pdf  
CG: GO FUCK YOURSELF  
TA: youre welcome

Karkat minimized the chat window and opened the file Sollux had sent, flipping through the second one with minimal interest. He had seen his own file many times before, used to the large swathes that were redacted or marked classified. He could fill those blanks in without any trouble. His brain scan looked familiar too, the jagged lines of the neural readout spiking and falling along the digitized page. He huffed out a breath, minimizing the document, and opened the first one, glaring at the name. Best hacker in paradox space he may be, but Sollux was a chutelicking tool and that was one thing that hadn’t changed in the two and a half sweeps Karkat had been gone. 

He felt slightly guilty, looking through Dave’s files like this, but the fact that he knew Strider had spent months digging through all of his personal information lessened that slightly. Clicking through the documents he was disappointed to find that large swathes of it were as redacted and classified as his file, making it difficult to deduce much of anything. He was able to determine some basic things, such as his Ranger record and simulator scores. Dave hadn’t been exaggerating when they had spoke, he really did have that kind of drop-kill ratio. He shook his head in mild disbelief, but he couldn’t argue with it. Karkat had seen how capable Dave was in the ring firsthand less than an hour ago. 

Sighing irritably, he turned his attention briefly back to Trollian. 

CG: THIS IS FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE  
CG: ALMOST EVERYTHING IN THIS BULLSHIT FILE IS REDACTED, I MEAN FUCK, EVEN HIS NAME AND BASIC BIOLOGICAL STATISTICS HAVE BEEN REDACTED. WHY IS DIRK SO HELLBENT ON KEEPING THIS GUY’S LIFE A SECRET?  
TA: better que2tiion: who giive2 a 2hiit.  
TA: diid you look at the 2can2 yet?  
CG: CALM YOUR SHIT DOWN, FUCK, I’M GETTING THERE

He clicked back to the document and skimmed to the end to locate the neural scan. He pulled it up and studied it, curious, before re-opening his own scan and moving it until it was side-by-side with Dave’s. Karkat squinted at the spiky waves, easily parsing the patterns and similarities, and shook his head. Well, fuck. The scans didn’t lie. He returned to his conversation with Sollux. 

CG: WELL FUCK  
TA: ii told you  
TA: 2hiit ii2 off the 2cale2  
CG: I DIDN’T THINK READINGS THIS HIGH WERE POSSIBLE BETWEEN INTERSPECIES PILOTS  
TA: took u2 all by 2urprii2e  
TA: every other co-piilot candiidate we rounded up for you wa2 a fuckiing joke in comparii2on  
CG: SO WHY THE SHIT IS HE ON THE GROUND AND NOT MEETING ME AT THE JAEGER IN TWO HOURS?  
CG: NOT THAT I’M THRILLED AT THE PROSPECT OF THAT ASSHOLE BEING IN MY HEAD, BUT WITH READINGS LIKE THIS I’D BE FUCKING STUPID TO ACT LIKE IT’S NOT THE BEST OPTION  
TA: that’2 the con2en2u2 where iim at two.  
CG: IF STRIDER’S THAT TALENTED HOW COME HE’S NEVER EVEN BEEN ON A CANDIDATE LIST?  
CG: IS DIRK REALLY THAT MUCH OF AN OVERPROTECTIVE SHITHEAD?  
TA: read the fiile, diip2hiit  
TA: bethideth hith undithclothed ‘trauma’ everyoneth heard about but doethn’t have any detailth on?  
TA: iin the fiive earth year2 he2 been at the 2hatterdome, 2triider ha2nt been driift compatiible wiith any other recruiited iinter2pec piilot  
TA: not a 2ingle one  
CG:... THE FUCK  
CG: YESTERDAY EQUIUS AND NEPETA SAID THEY’D RUN SIMULATED DROPS WITH HIM WHEN THEY FIRST GOT HERE  
TA: a 2iimulator ii2nt ju2t for piilot2 who can driift, and he wa2n’t piilotiing, ju2t doiing riide-along2  
TA: not everyone ha2 your natural talent2, 2ome piilot2 actually 2pend extra tiime in 2imulator2 to get better at kiiliing horrorterror2  
CG: RIGHT BECAUSE YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT BEING A PILOT  
CG: IS THAT WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU AREN’T BEHIND FIFTEEN COMPUTERS FONDLING YOUR HORNS, YOU RUN DROP SIMULATIONS FOR YOURSELF?  
TA: youre welcome for the help getting the fiile2, 2houtymcnub2  
TA: your appreciiation blow2 me the fuck away  
TA: ii 2ugge2t expendiing your energy on 2omethiing u2eful, like conviincing the deputy mar2hal to let hii2 douche brother be your copiilot  
TA: ii wa2 there, ii 2aw you take hiim on iin the riing, iif youre even half a2 good together iin a Mech a2 you were duriing the triial then...   
TA: 2hiit, we may actually have a fuckiing chance kk  
CG: YOU THINK SO  
TA: come on, you know iim ba2iically the bleake2t motherfucker iin the uniiver2e  
TA: Wouldnt 2ay that 2hiit unle22 ii meant iit  
TA: Do you really want two get back iin a Mech wiith anyone el2e?  
CG: …  
CG: WHAT I WANT CLEARLY ISN’T A FACTOR  
CG: ALL I CAN DO AT THIS POINT IS HOPE DIRK PULLS HIS POINTY-SHADED HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS AND REALIZES HE’D BE FUCKING OVER THE ENTIRE PROGRAM BY NOT LETTING HIS BROTHER IN A MECH, TRAUMA OR NO TRAUMA  
CG: THAT AND GET SOME BREAKFAST, I’M FUCKING STARVING  
TA: ii gotta go prep for the te2t driift  
TA: gue22 ii’ll catch you on the comm  
CG: YEAH MAN  
CG: LATER

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering twinArmaggedons [TA] at 0727 --

Karkat shut his husktop and sighed, scratching the back of his head. He still had more than an hour to kill before he had to report to the Jaeger, so he shrugged on a clean shirt and pulled on his jacket, shivering a little. Now that he’d gotten accustomed to the temperature, he was realizing just how cold the Shatterdome really was. 

The hallway was still deserted when he stepped out, most of the engineers and technicians now occupied with preparing the new Jaeger for the upcoming Drift test. He made his way to the mess hall, slightly unnerved by how quiet everything seemed. He wondered if this was how the Shatterdome felt during a horrorterror attack, and his stomach tightened. If things went as planned, he wouldn’t be around to find out, he’d be the one on the front lines taking it down. 

Karkat didn’t want to waste too much time eating, so he grabbed some grubcake and a cup of coffee and downed both expediently as he headed toward LOCCENT, unsure if he would find Dirk there but figuring it was a good place to start. He crossed the atrium and headed for the maintenance bay, following the path Dave had showed him yesterday. 

“If your intent is to find and speak to the Deputy Marshal, I would advise against it.” 

Karkat turned and saw Kanaya standing just behind him, demure and somehow still stylish despite being in her regulation fatigues, a sympathetic smile on her face. He frowned at her. “Why not?” he said, unable to keep the combative tone out of his voice. “Maybe if I talk to him he’ll stop being an asshole and I’ll actually have a competent co-pilot for this war we’re supposed to be winning.” 

She crossed the hallway and came to stand beside him. “Walk with me?” she asked, and Karkat nodded, the two of them heading for the maintenance bay at a leisurely pace. She seemed to glide across the floor, elegant and glowing even in clothes that by all rights should make people look like tuber sacks. It occurred to Karkat that the Jaegers really were modeled after their pilots, and the strongest point of correlation he’d found was the way Kanaya Maryam moved. 

“Did you know that when I first arrived at the Shatterdome, I was convinced I would never find a viable co-pilot?” Kanaya said, her voice low and full of an emotion Karkat couldn’t quite place. 

He let out a mirthless laugh. “After you lost your moirail? Fuck, yeah I know the feeling.” 

She nodded, sympathetic. “Naturally my trial with Rose was something of a shock. When I met her on my initial tour I found her to be snippy and cold in demeanour, thoroughly unpleasant, and my last possible choice for someone to give access to the innermost workings of my thinkpan.” 

Karkat felt his lips quirk into a half smile. Funny how he could relate to that feeling exactly after the events of the last twenty-four hours. “What changed?” 

“We went four-for-four when we sparred,” she said, wearing a smile of her own. “As ice-cold and unpleasant as she seemed at first, she was my absolute equal in the ring, and seeing that in action thoroughly intrigued me.” 

“Sounds more and more like pilot selection’s a fucked up surprise party here at Interspec,” he said, thinking about his conversation with Sollux. “Did any of the candidate trials go smoothly?” 

Kanaya laughed lightly. “Equius and Nepeta,” she said. “Of course. The trial was a formality and after two rounds Dirk told them to stop and, if I recall correctly, ‘get their asses up to their cockpit’.” She gave him a gentle smile. “I assure you, none of the rest of us had quite so simple an experience.” 

He thought about the little time he had spent with the others, particularly Terezi and Vriska. “Did Serket and Pyrope rip a hole in the Shatterdome?” 

“Only after they set foot in the cockpit,” Kanaya said, chuckling lightly. “Their trial was also a formality, but they had just begun to fully explore the extent of their vacillation, and that complicated things significantly.” 

Karkat felt his stomach twist a little at just how casually she discussed the subject, how could she be so calm about something that had been not just forbidden but straight up taboo back in the resistance? He put it out of his mind. “Did you ever feel…” he tried to find the words, and failed, sighing. “Your moirail, what was their name?” 

“Porrim,” Kanaya said, sadness flickering across her face and dimming her ambient glow. “Her name was Porrim.” 

“Did finding a new co-pilot ever feel like…” he sighed again, fuck this was a stupid conversation, but he knew nobody else in the damn Shatterdome could understand what he was feeling right now. “Like a betrayal? Of her memory?” 

She made a small sound, pondering this, then gave him another smile. “At first it felt that way,” she said. “When I first arrived at the program I felt a sense of obligation to the resistance, and this bred a great deal of resentment. My loss was like an open wound, and every step I took towards going back into battle felt like it was taking me further and further away from her. I felt that way for quite a while.” 

Karkat looked over at her, curious. “What changed?” he asked again. 

Her cheeks became tinged with green and her smile widened into something grateful, something genuine. “I realized that Rose and I were never meant to be moirails at all.” 

He huffed out a small breath, unable to hide his discomfort. “And that didn’t weird you the fuck out? Realizing you were piloting a fucking Mech with someone you were flushed for?” 

“I assure you, it was not an easy conclusion to draw,” Kanaya said, and Karkat could see a kind of residual shame in her expression. “It took almost a quarter-sweep for me to finally admit and accept my feelings to myself. Rose was very patient about the entire situation.” She began to glow a little brighter again, and looked at Karkat with a sympathetic expression. “It is strange, Drifting with someone new after such a loss. Your mind’s immediate reaction is to go back to what you had before, to latch onto the residual vestiges of your previous co-pilot’s memory. But it is important to remember that returning to the fight, especially after everything that we have faced in our exodus from Alternia and the struggle of the Resistance, that it is what they would want for us.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I am sure the memories of Gamzee still hurt, Karkat, but I can assure you, he would be proud of what you are doing.” 

Karkat felt the comforting weight of Kanaya’s hand and felt his bloodpusher ache a little, his memories of Gamzee still somehow so raw even after two and a half sweeps. “Well,” he said, not keeping the frustration from his voice. “Guess my thoughts on quadrants and Drifting with Strider aren’t particularly relevant at this point in time. Everything I’m seeing in this place tells me that Dirk’s call is final, so my co-pilot’s going to be one of the mouth-breathing fuck-ups I took down without a second thought during the trial.” He sighed loudly. “Because fuck winning, right?” 

Kanaya did not remove her hand, her smile still sympathetic. “Whatever happens, I know you will succeed,” she said. “You are far too stubborn not to, after all.” 

They had reached Karkat’s quarters. He fidgeted with the wheel for a few moments before he finally responded. “Guess I’d better suit up,” he said. “Thanks for talking me down from being an insubordinate fuckhead.” 

“I have a talent for it, it seems,” Kanaya said, removing her hand and giving him another gentle smile. “I will be observing your test Drift, Karkat. I wish you the best of luck with your co-pilot, whoever they turn out to be.” 

She turned to leave but Karkat started, causing her to glance back over her shoulder. “Uh…” he began, feeling a little stupid. “Any last words of advice?” 

Kanaya placed one slender hand on her hip, scrutinizing him carefully before speaking. “Trust the Drift,” she said. “And whoever they are, do not be afraid to trust your co-pilot. Your memories will be painful, I know mine were, but Rose kept me from falling apart completely. That is what it means to be co-pilots, and I am sure that yours will do the same for you.” 

He nodded, unsure of what to say in response. “Thanks,” he finally mumbled. The nerves and frustration were back, filling his digestion sac and his chest, and he sighed. “See you after.” 

“I look forward to it,” Kanaya said, and then she glided away, Karkat watching her retreating back in silence. 

Karkat returned to his respiteblock and changed quickly, still trying to ignore the nerves clamoring inside him. He hated this feeling, hated that his best co-pilot candidate was not only a complete douche, but not considered viable. He thought about the others he had met during the trial and felt his lip curl unconsciously into a snarl. Sharing his mind with anyone at all was bad enough, but none of them had any right to see what he had gone through, what he had lost. 

At least Dave could match him. At least Dave could keep up. 

He exited his quarters and briefly lingered, pondering the door across the hall and its occupant. He briefly considered knocking, trying to talk to Dave again, to convince him again, and realized he had already crossed the hall and raised his fist before he’d registered his own movement. 

“Fuck,” Karkat breathed out, stepping away and lowering his hand. He needed to focus, needed to clear his mind and stop his emotions from sending him ricocheting from one extreme to another. Whoever his co-pilot was, he’d have to suck it up and deal. What mattered now was walking into that cockpit and getting back in the saddle. 

He sighed. 

This was going to fucking suck. 

LOCCENT hummed with activity as he approached, communications officers scrambling over equipment and chattering amongst themselves. Karkat found Sollux near the front, directing foot traffic, and the yellowblood troll gave his old friend a toothy smile as they drew even. 

“Ready for thith?” Sollux asked. 

“As I can be, I guess,” Karkat shrugged. He made a face. “Any word on the co-pilot?” 

“The Deputy Marthal ith apparently waiting until the latht fucking minute to give uth any real informathion,” he said, scowling as he turned to his terminal and entered commands with a rapid flurry of claws over keyboards. “Jaeger finally hath a name though.” 

Karkat felt his eyebrows go up. “Yeah?” 

Sollux gestured out through the large panes of glass that lined the LOCCENT station and Karkat studied the massive Mech, her chrome panels and deep red lining still so unfamiliar, so full of the potential to strike, to destroy. 

“Yep!” this voice was the John human, who bounced over to Sollux - there was no other word for it, he practically had springs he was so energetic - to give him a file. “Her name is _Prometheus_.” 

Karkat stared out at the Jaeger, his Jaeger, the name bouncing around in his mind and rattling loose some memories, some long-abandoned knowledge. “Huh,” he said. “Like the human god-titan thing?” 

“That’th the one,” Sollux nodded. “Greek mythology. He wath the titan who thtole fire from the godth to protect humankind.” He gave Karkat another toothy smile. “Guethth Dirk thought it fit.” 

Karkat felt the weight of the name, considered its meaning. Defiance of a previously established order to protect something fragile, something helpless but desperate to survive. 

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.” He turned to the LOCCENT officers and gave them a nod, his jaw set. “All right, let’s do this shit.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Jaeger finally has a name! Shit is taking place! 
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who's been reading and leaving comments and kudos, you're all so awesome. Tune in next week for chapter 8, when we find out who Karkat's co-pilot will be! 
> 
> (y'all know it's gonna be Dave, otherwise we wouldn't have a story, but still the SUSPENSE)


	8. This Is Not A Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for transphobia in this chapter

_Are you deranged like me? Are you strange like me?_   
_Lighting matches just to swallow up the flame like me?_   
_Do you call yourself a fucking hurricane like me?_   
_Pointing fingers cause you'll never take the blame like me?_

_And all the people say,_

_"You can't wake up, this is not a dream,_  
 _You're part of a machine, you are not a human being,_  
 _With your face all made up, living on a screen,_  
 _Low on self esteem, so you run on gasoline."_  
\-- From ‘Gasoline’ by Halsey  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRHNi3QfFlE))

__

Someone was knocking on Dave’s door.

For a moment he considered ignoring it, pretending he had actually succeeded in his quest to sink into his mattress and become one with its springs. _Sorry, Dave’s not here, he’s the new king of Mattresstopia. Come back with an official embassage or not at all._

He stared up at the ceiling, phone lying on his chest and buzzing with Pesterchum messages from his friends and family, trying to question him, comfort him, bring him hope or encouragement when all he wanted was to stare at the ceiling through his shades and feel hopeless.

Roxy and Rose had both messaged him the same thing, more or less. They congratulated him, celebrated his accomplishment, and told him in no uncertain terms that he had to tell Dirk to get his head out of his ass and let him be a fucking pilot already. It didn’t help that Rose and Roxy were probably the only two people in the Shatterdome who knew _why_ Dirk was being so adamant about the situation, that they had been the people who had worked so hard to help him get over everything he had gone through all those years ago.

Five years on and he still had nightmares, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready. Everyone had nightmares, of course they did, the world was ending, nightmares were as commonplace as blinking anymore.

It was the subject of the nightmares that was uncommon. Everybody woke up in cold sweats thinking about Kaiju tentacles and teeth, especially if they’d survived an attack, but what woke him up sobbing in the middle of the night seemed so stupid, so ridiculous in comparison.

_You had a Kaiju inches away from eating you alive, Dave Strider, but your nightmares are always about_  Him.

The knock at the door sounded again, crisp and impatient, and Dave groaned. He didn’t know why Sollux hadn’t just messaged him or gotten him on the comm, he knew it was time to get up to LOCCENT to oversee the neural calibration in twenty minutes, why did they have to send a runner? His role in this project had just dropped from ‘essential’ to ‘cursory’, why did they want to kick him when he was down?

Groaning, Dave dragging himself off of his mattress, leaving his phone behind and shuffling to his door. If it wasn’t a runner, he half expected it was Karkat, come to yell at him for being a chickenshit again, so he didn’t bother looking through the peephole to confirm this theory.

This was why it was a shock to him that the face he saw when he pulled the door open was his brother’s.

“Dave,” Dirk’s voice was a little stiff, his jaw tight.

“Dirk?” his voice inflected it as a question automatically. What the fuck was his brother doing here?

“Mind if I come in?”

Dave shrugged an affirmation and his brother stepped into the room, pushing the door closed behind them. It was always weird having someone else in his room, and Dave shifted uncomfortably as his eyes darted between the unmade bed, the piles of computer parts and the blueprints messily tacked to his wall and surrounded by yellowed polaroids. Why was Dirk here? Why did today have to keep getting worse?

After a moment of silence Dirk cleared his throat, clearly feeling as uncomfortable as Dave. “You remember what I said to you five years ago?” he asked. “In San Francisco?”

Dave’s eyebrows knitted together. “Course,” he said. “So what?”

Dirk reached behind him and Dave realized that his brother had a sword strapped across his back. Carefully the older man unbuckled it and swung it around, holding it out to Dave in both hands like it was his birthright, which was not inaccurate.

“I made a promise,” he said, his tone grave but also gentle. “And it’s one I intend to keep.”

Dave looked at the sword, the piece of shit katana he’d made jokes about so many times over the course of his life, the sword passed down from father to son, and then to younger sons in turn. The last time he’d seen it up close, it had been lying in a pool of blood, and all he had felt was deep, bone-shaking relief. Now, he could feel his entire being alight with an aching, desperate hope.

_Was this really happening?_

He brought his hands up and took the sword from Dirk’s grasp, holding it almost reverentially for a moment. His eyes met Dirk’s even through their shades, and gave his older brother a solemn nod.

Dirk leaned over to give the door a push, opening it to reveal the hallway beyond, and gave Dave a lopsided smile. “Go get ready.”

With that, Dirk was gone, his coat swirling around him almost like a cape as he strode towards LOCCENT. Dave stood for a moment, hands gripped tight around the scabbard of the sword as he felt the thrill building up in his chest, the sudden violent explosion of victory in his mind.

It was happening. He was going to be a pilot.

He left the sword behind and took off down the hall at a run. Getting ready didn’t take long, it just required a few more steps than he’d normally put into his routine. The Jaeger techs were all beyond encouraging as they helped him suit up in the prep room, his back almost aching with hearty slaps and his ears ringing with congratulations. They’d all been working with him on this Jaeger - _Prometheus_ , her name was _Prometheus_ , Dave had to remind himself of that briefly - for the last year, and they knew how much this meant to him.

John was standing by the door that led to the conn pod, holding Dave’s helmet in his hands with a goofy grin on his face. “Being a pilot suits you,” he said, handing it to Dave. “Go give ‘em hell, hero.”

Dave smiled. “That’s the plan,” he said, tucking the helmet under his arm. “Karkat already in there?”

John nodded. “He’s calibrating the harness for the test,” he said. “Better head on in, Sollux is almost ready to start.”

“Sweet,” he said. He offered John his fist. “Thanks dude.”

“Any time,” John bumped it with his own. “Go be a badass.”

Dave left his friend behind and headed across the connecting ramp towards the cockpit, the head of _Prometheus_ waiting and flickering with active electronics and flashing notification lights. He still couldn’t believe this was happening, but he pushed his excitement aside to focus on the task at hand. It was a test Drift. He needed to keep his thoughts in order, keep them calm.

As he stepped into the cockpit he heard the LOCCENT Artificial Intelligence, Hal, announce his presence in an echoing voice: _“Two pilots onboard.”_ As John had informed him, Karkat was already inside, standing on the right side of the cockpit with his helmet in his hands.

“I’m gonna take the right side,” Karkat said, not turning around. His voice was low and unenthusiastic. “Can’t really do shit with my left arm any more.”

Dave circled around the machinery and rested a hand on the left hemisphere harness, his smile shifting into his best shit-eating grin. “Works for me,” he said. “I tend to favour my left hand anyway.”

Karkat’s head jerked up and he stared at Dave, and for a moment he could see something unfamiliar on the troll’s face. Was it relief? Karkat composed himself quickly though, mouth returning to its traditional scowl as he shifted his helmet to sit under his other arm. He grunted, taking a step towards his harness, and nodded at him.

“What?” Dave said, doing the same. “At a loss for words for a change? Don’t have anything to say?”

“What’s the point?” Karkat snorted. “Five minutes from now you’re gonna be in my head and you’ll know every fucking thing running around my thinkpan.”

Dave shrugged. “Fair enough.”

He strapped his helmet on as Karkat did the same, and noticed the troll giving him a once-over, his face full of that intense information processing stare Dave had seen him give to so many things over the last twenty-four hours. “You look better as a pilot than you did as a desk jockey, Strider,” he said, tone begrudging. “Suits you.”

“Guess it really does run in the family,” Dave replied, grinning to hide his nerves. “Ready to do this?”

Karkat nodded, still focused, and he stepped into the harness, clamps locking onto his boots as the back-piece whirred down and clipped onto his suit. Dave did the same, noting how different everything felt when it wasn’t a simulation, the suit heavier and fitting like a full body glove, the clamps to the walking mechanism heavy and firm on his boots, the controls suddenly flickering to life in front of him, readouts dancing across his helmet. Beneath him he could feel the entire Jaeger rumbling to life, the engines roaring in synchronicity with the commands he could hear Sollux reciting through the comm, the confirmations coming from Hal.

It all felt so right and all he could think was that it was about goddamn time.

Dave heard Hal’s artificial voice in his ear: _“Pilots onboard and ready to connect.”_ This was followed by the sound of Sollux’s voice, lisping but official: “Inithiating neural handthake.”

He sucked in a breath hard through his nose. This was the part the simulations couldn’t imitate. He heard Karkat do the same beside him before speaking in a low rumble.

“Remember, Strider, the simulator’s a far cry from how this shit actually works. You know what the RABBIT is?”

“Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers,” Dave recited, hearing Hal’s voice counting down echoing around the cockpit. _Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen._ “Yeah, memories, I know.”

“Good,” Karkat grunted, hitting buttons on the console in front of him. “Don’t chase them, just let them flow, you can’t latch onto anything, you gotta tune them out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dave blew out a breath as he heard Hal’s countdown progress ever closer to the start of the test. _Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six._ “‘Stay in the Drift, the Drift is silence’. I know what I’m about, son.”

“Fuck I hope so,” Karkat growled as the timer ticked down. “I hope so.”

Dave leaned back and looked straight ahead at his readouts, and Hal’s voice echoed in his ears.

_“Three. Two. One. Neural Interface Drift initiated.”_

It felt like his brain was being sucked through a straw and spun around in a blender. Suddenly Dave was standing on the roof of an apartment building in Texas, he was playing catch with Dirk in the park, he was kissing his mom goodbye at the airport when he was five, he was sparring with Rose in the training room, he was hiding breathless in a closet. Other memories pressed in on him, echoes of a life that was distinctly not his, a harsh and unforgiving sun, a massive beast with the head and pincers of a crab that should have scared the shit out of him but only made him feel affection, the scrape and burn of shackles around his wrists, the familiar smile of a tall troll in clown makeup, followed by the echo of that voice, Gamzee’s voice: _‘Right arm’s gone, brother.’_

In an instant he jerked back to reality, all the memories still swirling in his mind just below the surface, and let out an involuntary gasp. He was back in _Prometheus_ , Karkat in the harness beside him, and as one they raised their right hands, turning them in unison, and then their left. Dave had never felt anything like this before, a sense of unity, of pure connection with another person. Around him he could hear Hal’s electronic voice reporting back to LOCCENT: _“Right hemisphere calibrated. Left hemisphere calibrated.”_

Moving as one, Dave and Karkat both raised their arms, shifting into a boxer’s stance, and through the visor Dave could see the Jaeger, could see _Prometheus_ , following their movements, following their commands.

Hal spoke again: _“Preparing to activate the Jaeger,”_ and over the comm Sollux made an affirmative noise. “Lookth good, _Prometheuth,”_ he said. “Lining up real nithe.”

Dave could hear all of the commands like they were amplified, like he was experiencing them through two sets of ears instead of one. He was suddenly very aware of himself, his mind flickering between the natural sensation of his own skin and the alien sensation of what it felt like to be Karkat, the candy-corn horns on his head suddenly almost feeling like they were a part of Dave’s physical makeup. He’d always wondered what it felt like to be a troll, but now, here in the Drift, he actually _knew_.

_“Pilot to Jaeger connection complete.”_

Dave let out a slow breath and moved his hands again, Karkat doing the same. It was like he didn’t need to speak, Karkat instantly knew his intentions, and Dave knew his. He glanced over at the troll and saw his intense expression, understanding its purpose all of a sudden. So much happened in a cockpit, in a fight, you had to pay attention to every miniscule detail because you never knew what would be the difference between life and death. It was a level of attentiveness Dave could relate to in his own work but it had never been so hyperfocused, so strong.

They brought the arms of _Prometheus_ out, her left hand forming into a fist and the right hand pressing against it, a battle stance, and outside the cockpit, even through the suit and the Jaeger’s helmet and the roar of the engines, Dave could hear the citizens of the Shatterdome applauding. He smiled. This was more than a rush, it was probably what doing drugs felt like, like winning marathons and rocketing through the stratosphere to give any deity paying attention a righteous high five. Beside him he heard Karkat snort, clearly not fond of his analogy, and Dave found that he cared a lot less than he thought he would about the troll being in his head. Meant somebody else could appreciate his winning sense of humour.

Or not, Dave thought, or maybe Karkat thought. He was pretty sure that was a Karkat thought.

The troll turned to him briefly and Dave wondered what he was looking at for a split second before he heard a voice echoing in his head, familiar and terrified Alternian words, and then suddenly a feeling, the feeling of being in the Drift with somebody else, a Juggalo troll with burning rage and righteous dedication, Gamzee, focusing in on thoughts of reassurance, _it’s okay Karkat everything’s gonna be just fine my brother, I’m getting this eject sequence on, we’re gonna get the fuck out_ , and as Karkat stared at him Dave knew that he didn’t see Dave, he saw himself in the left hemisphere harness of _Miracle_ ’s cockpit. He saw himself watching as the horrorterror ripped Gamzee out of the cockpit with his tentacles, teeth snapping and uttering a bone-shattering roar.

A roar just like the one Dave had heard that day in San Francisco.

Around them alarms blared and Dave felt the machinery jerk to the right, Hal suddenly announcing “ _pilots out of alignment_ ” and Karkat starting up a stream of panicked cursing. Dave tried to focus but the roar seemed to tear right through him, stripping his resolve like it was tissue paper, and with a violent kick backwards he was…

_In San Francisco. April thirteenth and he’s seventeen years old and he and Rose are walking down the street in San Francisco with... Him, with Bro, storming ahead of them, angry and sullen, disappointed, his sword strapped to his back, muttering under his breath like he always does, they were such a disappointment, such a fucking waste of the Strider name, and Dave is yelling at him, pushing Rose behind him and sticking his hands over her ears so she doesn’t have to hear, doesn’t have to see._

_‘Stop it, Rose, you need to stop this game you two keep playing.’_

_‘It’s not a game, Bro, I’m Dave, SHE’S Rose.’_

_‘Rose Lalonde Strider, this pretend twin swapping game was cute when you guys were little but you’re grown ass adults now, you need to cut it the fuck out.’_

_The roar that’s making the air vibrate combines with the crunch of massive footfalls, the entire street shuddering, an earthquake of movement. Dave turns, terror in his eyes, as the Kaiju shrieks, tearing buildings apart and sending cars flying like they’re toys. Bro abandons them, charges forward, his sword flashing in the sunlight, and the monster’s jaws crash down, snapping him up and ripping him in two with its teeth._

_Dave sees the sword clatter uselessly on the ground in a pool of his brother’s blood, hears the Kaiju roar is it turns its attention to him, and underneath the terror he’s hit with a wave, an almost impossible wave, of pure and beautiful relief..._

_He watches the Kaiju advance and then snaps again, a voice yelling in his ear, (Karkat’s voice?) harsh and panicked as it yells_ “Dave snap out of it, it’s just a memory, you can’t chase it, don’t get stuck, stay in the now, don’t engage, DAVE!”

_He tries to hold on but his mind feels like it’s being fed through a woodchipper, and he’s suddenly in Texas, a warm spring day, and he’s ten years old and holding his twin’s hand, and they smile at each other, conspirators in a secret they’ve had since they could first speak, before it all falls apart in tears, sobbing, screaming, running through the apartment complex, hiding Rose in the bathroom cupboard so Bro will leave her alone, yelling over and over again ‘DAVE, my name is DAVE, you asshole, NOT ROSE’ and facing down the point of a sword for the right to be himself on a rooftop in the sweltering heat…_

_Dave stands on the roof, raises the piece of shit training sword his oldest brother gave him when he was ten, sets his jaw, and he’s lost in the memory._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're in the shit now aren't we? Don't hate me too hard for the cliffhanger, chapter nine will be up and ready for your reading pleasure next Thursday. 
> 
> Thanks again, so much, to everyone for reading and leaving such kind comments, here and on my tumblr. Having awesome readers like all of y'all means the world to me. 
> 
> Also, the incredibly talented cityinthesea made some absolutely GORGEOUS art for chapter 3, you should check it out [here](http://cityinthesea.tumblr.com/post/151617987874/i-drew-the-first-meeting-scene-of-if-i-lose)!


	9. Wings Pressed Under Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for this Chapter: abuse, transphobia, homophobia, misgendering, slurs, Bro Strider

_I saw you. Angels came to light your path._  
_I heard you keep their wings pressed under glass._  
_Now am I so enthralled that I might die?_  
_I saw you, sweetly smile, and say "do try"._

_I'd tear out my eyes for you, my dear_  
_To see everything that you do._

_I saw you so bereft so pale and weak_  
_When I looked through_  
_You and I declined to speak._  
_I won't say_  
_Anything_  
\-- From ‘Torch Song’ by AFI  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeeh6f6QNwI))

__

Sollux was yelling in Karkat’s ears as his head suddenly flooded with the horrific memories of Gamzee being torn from _Miracle_ ’s cockpit, his nostrils filled with the stink of acid, of blood, of salt water. He groaned, the pain of his moirail being violently snatched from him as the horrorterror shrieked feeling like a stitched wound being torn open again.

“ _Prometheuth_ , you are out of alignment, you are both out of alignment,” Sollux barked into Karkat’s ears as the AI echoed the same sentiment: _“Out of Alignment. Code Red.”_

Karkat grit his teeth, fighting the memory and the urge to drop back into that horrific day, shoving the image of his own bloodied face over on the left side of the cockpit away as hard as he could, shutting Gamzee out of his mind completely, trying to find the Drift again, desperately working to focus on the Drift and the blessed silence it could grant him if he could just reach it.

“I’m okay,” Karkat gasped into his comm, steeling his nerves, focusing on the feel of his boots against the walking mechanisms, the flashing lights of the cockpit. “I can control it, just give me a fucking second.”

“You’re thtabilizing, KK,” Sollux said, his tone frantic. “But Dave ith fucking gone.”

“What?” Karkat’s head snapped up and he turned to look at his co-pilot, body flooded with adrenalin. Dave was hanging in his harness, his jaw slack and expression blank, thousand yard staring past the readouts, totally lost.

“He’th chathing the Rabbit!” Sollux yelled. “Fuck.”

Karkat grimaced, feeling Dave’s memories surging up and over him like ocean waves, powerful and encompassing. “Dave,” he said, trying to keep his voice even as he addressed his co-pilot. He could do this, he was the veteran pilot here, he’d snapped back from Rabbiting before and he could get Dave out, he knew it. “Dave snap out of it, it’s just a memory, you can’t chase it, don’t get stuck, stay in the now, don’t engage, DAVE!”

Dave stared into the distance, still slack and unresponsive, and Karkat clenched his fists. He knew what he had to do. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and let Dave’s memories drag him down to the depths of the Drift.

_Earth’s sun beats down on his neck, everything smelling of asphalt and smog. Karkat sees two human wigglers - children, maybe five or so sweeps - a boy and a girl, though practically identical, holding hands outside a massive apartment complex, each with a suitcase packed with all their worldly possessions._

_“Now remember,” the boy says, his eyes covered by a pair of pointed shades. “I’m Dave and you’re Rose, and Bro will see us as Dave and Rose, and nobody ever has to know.”_

_The girl - at least Karkat thinks she’s a girl, something about her build makes him question that for a moment - nods, and they step into the building._

_Karkat suddenly jerks forward and it’s clearly a few years later - three years later, he knows this because Dave knows this - he’s standing in a room in a dark apartment building, street light filtering in through blinds covering a grimy window. A young boy - Dave - sits at his desk, slender pale hands poised over a set of turntables while a newsreel plays on the TV in the background, footage of a horrorterror attack with superimposed words running across the screen: THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST KAIJU ATTACK. The room is small and stuffy, fans spinning in corners and rustling polaroid pictures pinned up on the wall. On shelves lining the wall there are old books, records, and jars filled with some kind of preservation liquid, the still forms of mutant dead things floating within them. Dave’s shoulders are shaking, and Karkat can’t figure out why at first, but feels that he’s in pain._

_Suddenly the door crashes open and Dave is on his feet, shaky with a training sword in his hand, facing down the imposing man standing in the doorway. He’s holding a katana and wearing a baseball cap, pointed shades glinting in the dim light, and were it not for the paleness of his skin Karkat would swear this guy was Dirk. The man’s voice is a bass rumble, threatening and striking Karkat at his core. Dave is afraid. Dave is terrified. Karkat realizes Dave’s leg is broken, he’s limping, it’s splinted but a fresh break, and it’s horrifically painful, Karkat couldn’t figure out how he’d missed that before._

_“It’s the anniversary, little man,” the man says, his voice bouncing off the walls. “You and your sister better get your asses on the roof now, it’s time to Strife.”_

_“Rose isn’t here, Bro,” Dave replies, his voice shaky, his hands slick with sweat on the sword’s hilt. “She’s staying with friends today.”_

_“Just me and you then,” Bro says, and Karkat watches as he swings the katana in an arc, bringing it down to clash with Dave’s own sword. The man is bitter, more bitter than anyone Karkat has ever seen, and he’s cold, tenacious, brutal. He radiates disdain, disgust, resentment, and Karkat is torn between feeling Dave’s fear and his own anger._

_“Do you even remember them, Dave?” Bro spits, dodging around Dave impossibly fast, driving him out of the room so fast that Dave falls over, landing hard against the wall of the hallway outside and letting out a strangled scream at the feeling of his leg giving out under him, broken and useless. Karkat follows, watching in horror. “It’s been three years, can you even remember our parents? What they did for you? How they died for you?”_

_“I remember!” Dave shouts, his voice high and thready, trying to hold his frayed nerves and terror inside him. “I’ll always remember, I swear!”_

_“Damn right you will,” Bro shoves the point of Dave’s sword under his chin. “You and your sister both, you’ll always remember that they died to save you, and how are you repaying them? By being weak?”_

_“Leave Rose out of this!”_

_“She’ll know in her own way, little man,” Bro snaps, using the sword to tilt Dave’s chin up. “And you’ll know because I’m gonna train you, you’re gonna learn to fight those fucking monsters. You want that, don’t you? You wanna be like your brother Dirk right? Off fighting in a Jaeger? Not like me, stuck here trying to raise you ungrateful brats when the world is fucking ending?”_

_“Yes,” Dave starts to cry. “I wanna be a pilot.”_

_“STOP CRYING, YOU LITTLE FAGGOT,” Bro’s sword flashes and blood blossoms on Dave’s cheek. “Men don’t cry, men fight. Be a man and FIGHT ME.”_

_“My…” Dave gasps. “My leg… ‘s broken.”_

_“I taught you how to set a broken leg when you were eleven, Dave, stop making excuses, if it still hurts it’s because you fucked it up.”_

_“I set it but it still hurts, Bro, it hurts-”_

_Another bloody slash across his cheek. “Stop making fucking excuses and STRIFE, you pathetic disgrace to the Strider name. PROVE YOU CAN HANDLE THE KAIJU.”_

_Karkat tries to call out to Dave in that moment, tries to make eye contact with the terrified boy clutching the practice sword, telling him “This is just a memory, Dave, it’s not real, he’s not real!”_

_Dave screams and lunges forward, swinging his sword to block Bro’s next blow, his entire being nerves and terror that he’s going to be found out, that Bro’s going to realize what he did any minute, and Karkat doesn’t understand-_

_Until the memory lurches and it’s two years later and Karkat has to flatten himself against a wall to get out of the way. Dave is running down a narrow hallway, dragging Rose behind him, both of them are terrified, Rose in tears. Behind them Karkat can hear Bro smashing things, plates and furniture, yelling, enraged, and Dave jerks Rose to the side, pulling her into the bathroom and crowding her into the cupboard under the sink._

_“You have to hide, it’s the only way.”_

_“Dave I don’t want to leave you alone-”_

_“I can handle him, Rose, I’ve been handling him since we got here, I’ll come get you when he’s calmed down, then we can deal with it together.”_

_“Dave-”_

_“Rose, I won’t let him hurt you, we’ve come this far, I’ll talk him down and then everything will be fine, it’ll be fine, I love you Rose.”_

_“I love you too, Dave.”_

_Rose hides, cramped and terrified in the cupboard, and Dave sets his jaw, taking his sword in his hand and leaving the bathroom, running for the roof. He can hear Bro behind him, yelling at him to GET BACK HERE YOU LYING SACK OF SHIT, but he doesn’t stop, charging up the stairs and bursting out onto the roof, the smoggy night sky rumbling with the threat of a summer storm. Karkat steps away from the door and watches, barely able to speak at all with the intensity of the memory._

_“YOU.”_

_Bro’s voice is sharper than his sword, low and cold and enraged as it emanates from the stairwell. Dave holds his sword tight, his hands steady even though his heart is pounding._

_“You’re a pair of sick fucked up kids, aren’t you?” Bro advances, his lip curled in a snarl. “Our parents died saving you from the Kaiju and this is how you repay them? Fucked up games? How long have you two been switching your shit around, how long have you been playing at being a boy, ROSE?”_

_The name is like a slap in the face, Dave visibly flinching. “I’m Dave, Bro,” he says, his voice shaky. “That’s what we tried to tell you, I know we started out like that but we’ve felt like this for years now, we’re happier like this-”_

_“I don’t give a FUCK,” Bro spits, advancing on him. “You lied to me, then you turned this into a real funny prank, didn’t you? Decided to pull one over on your brother, on the guy who’s fucking raising you, that is just fucking sick, Rose.”_

_“I’m DAVE, not ROSE,” he protests, certain and furious but still terrified. His worst fears had come to pass, but at least Rose was safe, hidden. “Please, Bro, this is what I want-”_

_“Guess what, you little freak, I don’t give a SHIT what you WANT,” Bro swings his katana and he and Dave meet in a clash of steel, the sound bouncing across the Texas rooftops. “Rose is the name our parents gave to you, and Dave is the name they gave to him, that little tranny fuck up who’s running around wearing a goddamn dress-”_

_“DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE TALK ABOUT HER LIKE THAT!” Dave swings and his sword meets flesh, blood suddenly dripping on the rooftop, the gash in Bro’s shoulder stark against his white shirt-_

Karkat suddenly snapped back to reality as he felt the Jaeger jerk to the left, and beside him he saw Dave throw out his hands like he was holding the bladed weapon from his memory. As he watched suddenly the weapons systems blared to life on the screens around him, the plasma cannon in _Prometheus’_ s left arm roared to life. Over the comm he suddenly heard Sollux yelling, panicked. “WEAPONTH THYTHTEMTH CHARGING, THIT, GO TO THE FAILTHAFE!”

Karkat tried getting through to Dave again, his co-pilot still lost in his memories, tears streaming down his face and his breath coming in short gasps, hands still up like he had his sword in front of him and he was staring down his brother on the Texas rooftop. “Dave!” he called across the cockpit, feeling sick, he was still there, still in Dave’s head, feeling every second of his co-pilot’s terror and powerlessness. “Dave, I’m here, it’s just a memory, you can snap out of it, fuck, come on, you can do it!”

Dave kept staring, his hands still raised and the plasma cannon still charging, and in his ears Karkat could hear Sollux and John both yelling loudly over the comms.

“Failsafe isn’t going!”

“The fuck do you mean it’th not going?”

“The neural blocker isn’t working, Sollux, Dave’s connection is too strong!”

“Thit everybody GET OUT NOW.” He repeated the phrase in both Alternian and a human language Karkat couldn’t understand. “GET OUT NOW.”

“Dave!” Karkat could feel tears of his own threatening behind his eye and he gritted his teeth. He’d been through some shit in his life, but this was different, he felt how it was different, this was a betrayal of everything humans considered family. “Fuck, Dave! Snap out of it!”

His co-pilot shook and Karkat dove into the Drift again, his mind jerking right back into the moment, _and Dave is screaming at his oldest brother, hands shaking. “She is a GIRL and she is your fucking SISTER.”_

_“I’m embarrassed to call either of you sick little shits my flesh and blood,” Bro’s voice is a low growl. “Playing your fucked up little games.”_

_“It’s not a game,” Dave protests, his sword at the ready still, adrenalin coursing through him. “It’s the truth. I’m a boy, Bro, I’ve always been a boy, Rose has always been a girl.”_

_Bro advances, but then pauses, his face calculated and shrewd. “Fine,” he says, lowering his sword briefly. “You want to be a boy so bad, ‘Dave’? I’ll play along. You two can have your little game. And I?” He smiles and it’s almost a rictus of sadistic glee. “I’ll show you what it really means to be a man.”_

_The memory shifts again and Karkat follows it, watching Dave continuing to train over two more years, Dave sobbing in the bathroom as he measures his chest, wrapping it in tight bandages to make it less noticeable, sparring day in and day out, setting broken bones and cringing every time he doesn’t do well enough, doesn’t earn the right to be ‘Dave’ for the day. Karkat watches him as he swings his sword and it clashes with Bro’s again, and he’s taunting him, calling him names, he hits like a girl, he’s weak like a girl, he’s always going to be a girl, and Dave screams, all the time thinking that he can do this as long as he keeps Bro away from Rose, the real Rose._

Reality swims into his thinkpan again and Karkat can hear Sollux yelling, hear the sound of cables being ripped out of sockets, everyone in LOCCENT in a panic, and he clearly hears Dirk’s authoritative tone telling them “TAKE THEM OFFLINE, NOW.”

_The memory shifts back to its initial starting point, and Karkat’s standing on the street in San Francisco, watching Dave and Rose cling to each other as the horrorterror snaps their brother in half with its massive jaws. Dave’s relief is short-lived as the monster screams, its hot breath almost blowing them over, and as the two of them start to run the horrorterror stops, distracted by something, the grinding of metal and the footfalls of something massive, something powerful-_

Karkat felt himself being ripped out of Dave’s mind and he gasped, reeling at the sudden ejection from the Drift. Around him he could see _Prometheus’_ s systems powering down, everything going dead and whining to a grinding halt as Dave lowered his arms and the plasma cannon returned to dormancy.

“Fuck,” Karkat choked out, feeling his harness disengage. He stumbled forward and immediately threw himself to the left, Dave completely dazed and going limp in his own rig. Scrambling around once Dave was completely detached, Karkat dragged his own helmet off and in an instant was right by Dave’s side, the human shaking violently as he slumped to the floor. “Shit,” Karkat mumbled as he caught him, unclipping his co-pilot’s helmet and tossing it aside. His shades were askew and his eyes were closed. “Dave, Dave, can you hear me?” Around them he could hear the AI reporting: _“Neural bridge exercise, invalid.”_

Dave groaned, his breaths coming harsh and with a hard wheeze behind them, and one of his hands involuntarily clutched at Karkat’s arm. Karkat shifted to try and give Dave more support and his co-pilot jerked upright, his shades flying across the cockpit, his hands up in loose fists. “Fuck!” he yelled, his voice high and panicked. “Get the fuck away from her!”

“Dave,” Karkat grabbed his shoulders tight, pulling him back down as best he could, not wanting him to thrash and injure himself on the harness. “Dave, it’s not real, you’re back, it’s okay, fuck, it’s okay.”

Dave relaxed a little at these words, collapsing back into Karkat’s arms, and as he looked up to try and focus on Karkat, the troll felt his bloodpusher stop.

Dave’s eyes were red.

They blinked at each other for a second, Dave still shaking violently, and he looked incredibly small, vulnerable. All Karkat could see in that moment was the terrified teenage boy on the rooftop in Texas, facing down his brother to protect his twin sister. Almost without thinking, Karkat shifted one of his hands out from under Dave’s shoulder and gently rested it on his co-pilot’s cheek, papping it carefully. “Shoosh,” he whispered, wiping Dave’s hair, damp with sweat and stuck to his forehead, out of his eyes with a claw. “It’s okay, shoosh, he’s not here. You’re safe.”

“Rose,” Dave choked, his voice hoarse. “Where’s… Rose?”

“She’s safe too,” Karkat whispered, still papping, his digestion sac tied up in knots and his voice gravelly as his chest began to rumble with a comforting chirring sound. He could hardly believe what he had just seen in Dave’s head, the brutality of it all, the terror and violence his co-pilot had experienced. It was an upbringing more suited for a troll, and he felt sick at that thought, and above all he was so completely floored by the fact that Dave’s eyes were _red_ , the same candy red he himself saw in the mirror every day. Saying they had more in common than he’d initially thought was the understatement of the millennium. “You’re both safe.”

Dave seemed to slump in relief, going boneless in Karkat’s arms, and as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell unconscious, Karkat finally registered that he was being visibly, actively pale towards Dave. Holy fuck, he was sitting here clicking at him, chirring loudly, and actually _shooshpapping_ him, hand on face and everything. What the hell, Vantas? He jerked his hand away, moving it somewhere less conciliatory as he coughed, ceasing the chirrs, and felt his entire face flush. He hoped nobody had noticed.

“Dave!” Karkat jerked his head around to see Rose standing at the cockpit entrance, stricken while Dirk stood beside her looking drawn and very grave.

They’d probably noticed. Shit. He shifted Dave’s weight under him and moved to make room as Rose joined him, clearly close to tears.

“He’s alright,” Karkat said to her, his voice a gruff whisper. “Passed out but he’s okay, he knows he’s back.”

“Did he…” Rose trailed off, not sure what to say, and Karkat stared at her, feeling like his Drift with Dave had exposed something extremely private about the Strider-Lalonde family, something nobody else was meant to see. “When he Rabbited… where did he go?”

“Texas,” Karkat whispered, looking away from her now, definitely feeling shame. He was an intruder, this was something for family, but he had felt every second of it, and it remained stark and brutal on his thinkpan. He swallowed. “Bro.”

Rose’s entire face tightened and she looked about as sick as Karkat felt. “ _Fuck,_ ” she whispered, a surprising word coming from a woman who seemed the pinnacle of poise and reserve in every other interaction he had had with her. She turned behind her to look at Dirk and the glance they exchanged spoke volumes, things Karkat shouldn’t have been able to understand but absolutely did after what he had seen, after what he had felt.

Suddenly the cockpit was filled with medical personnel, a short woman with dark hair and an overbite that resembled John’s bustling in and helping a paramedic lift Dave onto a stretcher. Karkat got to his feet and stepped to the side, joining Rose on the other end of the cockpit while Dirk led the medical team away, presumably towards the infirmary.

He felt a hand on his arm as he watched them take his co-pilot away and he turned to see Rose looking up at him, her expression filled with fear and concern along with an expression Karkat had trouble parsing at first. Was she ashamed?

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice wavering. “I had hoped that after all this time, Dave would be able to…” she trailed off, her expression tugging at the strings of Karkat’s pump biscuit. “Handle it.”

He didn’t know how to respond to her, not just what she said but in general. Before she had just been another human, Kanaya’s co-pilot and one of the best and brightest of the Shatterdome. Now he looked at her and his mind was filled with the images he’d seen in the Drift, of the terrified girl hiding in a cupboard under the sink, and immediately had the urge to protect her just as strongly as Dave had all those sweeps ago.

It was intense, and Karkat had to fight to keep his tears at bay. “You never know how somebody will handle the Drift,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “All kinds of shit can happen.”

Rose nodded, and the two of them fell silent, following the medical team towards the infirmary. Karkat still felt like an intruder, a man witness to something that was none of his business. He could feel his impressions of Dave Strider shifting in his mind, the human’s actions and his attitude over the few days they had known each other all given much-needed context.

Karkat had solved the puzzle of his co-pilot, but the cost of that weighed heavy on his chest, and he was at a loss for what to say to anybody about it.

Dave regained consciousness halfway to the infirmary, and Karkat and Rose waited on the other side of the glass as Doctor Crocker checked him over, both still silent and not looking at each other. Kanaya arrived after a few minutes, and she stood between them in gentle sympathy.

By the time they cleared Dave, a small crowd had attempted to gather outside the infirmary. Tavros wheeled through the crowd, shooing away as many people as he could, including Rose and Kanaya, but one look from Karkat sent him right in the other direction, knowing better than to fuck with him. As Dave stepped out of the examination room, shaky and subdued, he met Karkat’s eyes and froze, expression mostly hidden by his shades but still absolutely clear.

He knew Karkat had seen everything, and the fear on his face made Karkat feel sick inside.

“Well,” a voice echoed down the hall, and Karkat spun around to see Vriska at the other end of the infirmary hallway, hands at her hips and striding towards them a scowl on her face. “That was some pathetic hoofbeast shit right there, boys.”

“Fuck off, Serket,” Karkat growled, instantly on the defensive and moving between her and Dave automatically. His co-pilot was a few paces to the right of him, and visibly tense, like he was ready to run at any moment. “This doesn’t have shit to do with you.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” she spat, getting in karkat’s face. “You and your little co-pilot here just put the entire Shatterdome at risk with that jacked up stunt, Vantas.”

“You don’t know a fucking thing about what just happened!” Karkat snarled at her, not backing down.

“I know that you’re a has-been and he’s a rookie,” she said, her tone deeply condescending. “You’re both disasters, and you-” she jabbed a clawed finger in Karkat’s face. “-are a fucking disgrace, a sorry fucking excuse for a troll. How about you do the entire species a favour and disappear again, huh? Fuck off and do what you’re good at, you coward!”

“Stop,” Karkat was surprised to hear Dave’s voice, shaky but full of anger, his eyes narrowed as he glared at Vriska. “You have no right to talk to him like that.”

Vriska looked taken aback for about a second before she rounded on him, her fangs flashing as she gave a wide grin. “Oh, suddenly he’s got teeth!” she laughed. “What are you gonna do, Strider, cry on me like the little bitch you are?”

Karkat’s fist flew out of nowhere, hitting Vriska in the nose with a loud ‘smack’. She stumbled backward but immediately recovered, dropping into a fighting stance and bringing her own fist up to swing at Karkat’s head. She connected with his jaw and he grunted, ducking back and swinging around to get her again. Vriska blocked him easily and they traded blows back and forth for a few seconds, Karkat vicious and furious, if she had any idea what Dave had been through, what had happened to him…

He dodged around her and grabbed her by the shoulders, bringing his knee up to her gut, but she blocked it, grunting angrily and shoving him away, allowing him the range to punch her hard in the jaw, sending her down on one knee and spitting cerulean blood across the floor.

“Apologize to him,” Karkat spat, his knuckles slicked and blue with her blood.

“Eat shit,” she hissed at him in Alternian, wiping blood off her mouth and then lunging forward in a violent swing. Karkat ducked and weaved out of the way of it before hitting her in the jaw again, blocking her blows and shoving her hard towards the wall. It wasn’t sparring, and it wasn’t caliginous, it was a violent bloody beatdown and Karkat was ready to tear her fucking horns off.

Vriska responded in kind, shoving him off of her with a yell and then ramming into him hard, getting under his arm and driving him into the opposite wall with a crash, her fists jamming into his gut with blows as hard as she could muster. Karkat pushed her down and got her arm in a lock, making her yell in pain and struggle as he spun her around and slammed her hard against one of the long pipes lining the walls of the hall outside the infirmary. The pipe cracked on impact, hot steam erupting from the break and making her yell in pain and frustration.

“I said fucking apologize,” Karkat spat, keeping his fists up as she staggered away from the wall, her teeth blue with blood and her eyes flashing, murderous. She darted forward again, spinning and swinging hard as Karkat blocked, and they were at it again, fists flying and teeth bared. She was sloppy in her anger and Karkat took advantage, blocking her arm one last time and taking her down hard onto the concrete floor with a grunt, her face impacting with a sick smacking sound.

As Karkat tightened his grip on her arm, making her yell again, a chorus of voices rang out from the other end of the hall. He looked up to see Dirk and Terezi running towards them.

“The FUCK’s going on here?” Dirk yelled, his face dark and furious. “Get on your feet, both of you.”

Karkat released Vriska and the two of them stumbled upright, groaning and wheezing slightly from exertion. She bared her teeth at him and snarled as she spit more blood, and Karkat set his jaw at her, sneering.

“Vantas, Strider, my office,” Dirk barked, pointing back the way he had come. “NOW.”

“We aren’t finished,” Vriska hissed, still in Alternian, and made to swing at Karkat again.

“Yes you are,” Terezi snapped, grabbing her co-pilot to hold her back. “You’re a Ranger, Vriska, stop acting like a fucking wiggler.”

Karkat stared her down as Vriska backed off, clearly agreeing only to appease Terezi, and the look she gave him was cold rage and violence, telling him that there was no way this was over, not yet. He stepped away, following Dirk down the hall, Dave beside him, silent and withdrawn. Karkat couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that Dave hadn’t tried to stop him from beating the shit out of Vriska, and that told him enough about how Dave had felt about the situation.

The Deputy Marshal’s office was close by, and Dirk shut the door behind them, indicating that they stand in front of his desk. It was clearly a converted living space, a walkway behind them leading to an outdoor viewing hatch that sunlight flooded through.

Karkat spoke before anybody else could, Dave still silent and tight-faced to his left. “Deputy Marshal, I went out of phase first, this is my fault-”

“No,” Dirk stood behind his desk, not facing either of them, his voice blade sharp and restrained. “The mistake was mine.” He turned, formal and grave even behind his shades. “I should never have let the two of you in the same Jaeger.”

Karkat sighed, infuriated. “So what now?” he said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his tone. “You’re gonna ground us?”

“Not you, Vantas,” Dirk said, hands folded in front of him as he focused on Dave, who sucked in a breath, every muscle tensing.

Karkat watched as his co-pilot stiffened and became infinitely more formal, his jaw clenched and his nails digging into his palms. Karkat could tell he was holding back tears, and he felt all the worse for being able to tell.

“Permission to be dismissed,” Dave choked out, his voice very small, his hands shaking. “Sir.”

Dirk’s face softened somewhat, his hands falling to his sides, and his voice was full of something Karkat hadn’t expected: sadness. “Permission granted, Officer Strider.”

Dave stepped away, heading for the door, and Karkat felt his stomach lurch. That couldn’t be it, there had to be something more the two of them could do. “Dave,” he called, his tone a combination of desperate hope and sympathetic pleading, but all Dave did was turn briefly to look at him before opening the door and leaving them behind.

Karkat rounded on Dirk then, his rage now back and boiling in his blood. “Sir, with all due respect, what the everloving fuck? Dave is the strongest candidate we’ve got to co-pilot _Prometheus_.” Dirk looked away, his face solemn, and Karkat snapped, advancing and defiant. “Do you have any better ideas?”

“Vantas,” Dirk’s voice betrayed his demeanour, harsh and full of as much anger as Karkat felt, as much frustration. “Don’t think that just because I appear calm that I’m not going to hesitate to chew you the fuck out!” His voice rose as he spoke, taking a step towards Karkat, the two of them almost eye to eye despite Karkat having a few inches on the human. “Save your insubordination for another goddamn day!”

Karkat scowled at him, not breaking his gaze. He made to speak, but Dirk interrupted him, stepping closer, practically nose to nose with him.

“Dave can’t reign his memories in during combat,” Dirk said, that sadness back in his voice. “He’s too inexperienced.”

Dirk stepped away from him, crossing past him to leave the office, conversation clearly over, and Karkat felt his rage flare again, unable to stop himself. “Bullshit,” he said. “That’s not why you grounded him. I was in his head, in his memories, I saw everything, I saw what your older brother did to him-”

“I don’t CARE what you saw,” Dirk’s voice snapped in the echoing chamber of the office, the door opening with a creak. “This conversation is over.”

It had been sweeps since the last time Karkat had Drifted with someone, but he knew that getting flashes of his co-pilot’s experiences were common, especially if he encouraged them. He tried to understand Dirk’s attitude, tried to search what he had seen for answers, and he felt his mind slip into the last memory he’d seen in Dave’s mind before they had been disconnected, _in San Francisco, the horrorterror slain brutally in the streets, acid blood leaking in rivers down the hill. Rose and Dave stare, arms still tight around each other, as the Jaeger approaches, backlit by the sun. Karkat recognizes it instantly. It’s an old human model, the same Jaeger that found him in Alaska._

_A figure climbs out of the hatch, unclipping his helmet, and even from this distance Karkat recognizes the face, the features, the pointed shades, the expression of grim determination, and he sees the twin teenagers look even more relieved, almost reverent._

_Dirk Strider saved his younger siblings that day, from more than he had ever intended._

Karkat jerked back to the present, following Dirk’s retreating back, protesting. “I know what he means to you,” he said, knowing he sounded as desperate as he did angry. “I saw you save them!”

Dirk ignored him, still walking away, and Karkat felt something inside him snap, charging after him in a hot rage.

“Hey,” he snarled. “HEY!”

“Conversation fucking over, Ranger,” Dirk said, not turning around as he made his way down the hall towards the elevator.

“Deputy Marshal,” Karkat ran to catch up to him. “We need to talk about this, just for one fucking second-!”

Karkat lunged forward and grabbed Dirk’s arm, whipping him around like he was made of straw. Dirk wrenched free of him, staring him down in a controlled, deliberate ‘how fucking dare you’ expression that made Karkat flinch, despite having several inches and at least fifty pounds of muscle on the human. Karkat pressed on, needing to make his case. “I know you rescued them,” he said, speaking quickly. “You couldn’t protect him before that but that doesn’t mean he’ll always need to be protected, if you do this you’re just holding him back!”

Dirk pressed the button on the elevator console before turning back to Karkat, raising a single tense finger and jabbing it in Karkat’s face. “One,” he said, his voice deadly serious. “Don’t you ever touch me again. Two,” He raised a second finger. “Don’t you EVER. Touch Me. Again.”

Karkat stepped back, silent and taut with anger, waiting until Dirk spoke again.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, his voice back to clipped and formal. “Whatever you saw, you have no idea who I am or where I’m coming from in this fight, and my life story’s not your fucking business. The only thing you, and everyone else in the Shatterdome needs to know, is that I am a constant presence, a fixed point, the last man standing. Don’t give me sympathy, don’t give me admiration, you are here for one thing and one thing only, and that is to obey my commands and to fight Kaiju.” His voice grew soft, dangerous, and Karkat resisted the urge to flinch again. “If you can’t give me that, Ranger Vantas, then you can fuck off back to the Wall I found you on. Are we clear?”

Karkat swallowed, trying not to show anything other than his anger, and nodded. Dirk leaned forward and placed his hand next to his ear, clearly indicating he was going to need more than that. Karkat’s voice was a low growl, straining against his indignant fury. “Yes, sir.”

Dirk turned away and stepped into the elevator, looking back with an expression that had returned to stone stoicism. He did not take his eyes from Karkat as the doors slid closed. When he was gone, Karkat turned in the hallway and stared back at the infirmary, mind still full of anger, of frustration, and of an understanding of Dave Strider he could still barely fathom. He headed for his quarters, still lost in the flashes of the dark and miserable memories that were not his, of the heat of the Texas sun, the clash of weapons, the wings of dead animals pressed against formaldehyde-filled glass jars, and all he could feel was sympathy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I warn y'all things were gonna get intense? Because yeah, things got really fuckin' intense. I promise things are gonna get better, they just had to get a little dark first. 
> 
> Many thanks again to everyone who's been reading, commenting, and leaving kudos, as well as talented and fantastic artists who have been making beautiful art, which you can find on my tumblr under the #IILEITF tag. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading, and we'll be back next Thursday!


	10. Bloodstains On The Ground

_Head outside most every day_   
_To try to keep the wolves away_   
_Imagine nice things I might say_   
_If company should come_

_Woke up afraid of my own shadow, I mean, like genuinely afraid_  
 _Headed for the pawnshop to buy myself a switchblade_  
 _Someday something's coming from way out beyond the stars_  
 _To kill us while we stand here, it'll store our brains in mason jars_  
\-- From ‘Lovecraft in Brooklyn’ by The Mountain Goats  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHgZRGLgo0))

 __

 Dave knew he didn’t have to immediately return to his previous post. Hell, he probably could have gotten away with staying in his room ignoring his colossal fuck-up at least until the next attack, but sitting and stewing over his failure in his room wasn’t going to make anything better, so the morning after his catastrophic meltdown he woke up, gathered his notes, and returned to his post at Dirk’s office.

His brother looked surprised to see him, eyebrows going up over his shades as he opened his office door, but he gave him a stiff nod, stepping out to join him in the hallway. “You good?” he asked.

“Enough,” Dave shrugged, adjusting his clipboard in his hands. “Ready to work.” 

“Okay,” Dirk nodded, his expression still tight and anxious, clearly on edge after everything that had happened earlier. “We’re going down to the science team. Roxy and Eridan have some more data for us about the Kaiju attacks.”

Dave nodded back, fiddling with his pen as he fell into step with Dirk, the two of them approaching the elevator. Dirk pressed the button and neither of them spoke, the silence heavy between them, and as they rode the elevator down to the lab, he could feel his older brother was full of questions, unspoken but obvious. Was Dave okay? Did he need to talk about what he had felt in the Drift? His brother would never ask though, because that wasn’t his job, that was Rose’s job, was Roxy’s job, and his job was just keeping Dave safe. 

That’s what he told himself anyway. If he told himself that Dirk was just trying to keep him safe, then maybe Dave could tell himself that the Deputy Marshal’s behavior wasn’t due to Dirk’s guilt over the entire subject of Dave’s traumatic past in the first place. 

He should have known he was going to relive the entire thing in gruesome technicolour, but for some reason that wasn’t the memory that lingered in Dave’s mind after the fact. Every time he blinked the face that snapped into stark relief was that of Gamzee Makara, Karkat’s former moirail, and the diagonal marks dripping purple blood across his face. He felt his stomach twist, reflecting on everything about his co-pilot -- well, former co-pilot, looked like that was a short-lived fantasy -- that suddenly made sense. His apathy towards the Interspec program, the pain of having to get back in the cockpit after losing his closest friend, someone who he had loved deeply, the ache of having let him down… 

Dave swayed a little as the memory threatened to consume him and he fought it, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut. Dirk noticed his action, grunting an inquiry before Dave waved him off, leaving the Deputy Marshal to stare straight ahead again, seemingly satisfied with his decision to keep Dave Strider at the rank of Officer instead of Ranger. 

Dave felt his cheeks burning with shame.

As they exited the elevator and approached the lab, Dave could already hear the familiar sound of Roxy loudly arguing with Eridan. The conflict actually comforted him some in the wake of how utterly bizarre the last few days had been. He’d passed out in a Jaeger cockpit after he’d had a brutal live-action PTSD nightmare while accompanied by a hostile, equally fucked up troll, so his sister and their resident physicist fighting was a beautiful taste of the everyday, an eye in the miserable shitstorm of his failed Drift.

Dave and Dirk stepped into the lab and were immediately accosted by cats. The converted cargo area the room had started as was virtually unrecognizable in the wake of everything the science team had constructed and studied there in the last five years. A thick line divided the room, splotchy yellow paint flaking from years of footfalls and the acidic juice of Kaiju remains. Dave loved coming down to visit the lab, to see how many more blackboards Eridan had dragged onto his side to cover with chalk equations (there were currently ten of them), to witness Roxy’s latest dissection of whatever her team had brought back from their latest expedition, and to visit his sister’s ever-expanding feline menagerie.

“Sup Mutie,” Dave said, scratching the ear of the nearest cat, Vodka Mutini, who was sitting on a tank of what looked suspiciously like preserved Kaiju entrails. The little black cat purred and Dave watched as Dirk was practically bowled over by another one of Roxy’s feline companions. 

“I think Meowgon’s gotten fatter,” Dirk muttered, stepping over the behemoth cat that was headbutting his calves. “You sure these little assholes aren’t eating your samples, Rox?” 

“Oh shut up, Dirk,” Roxy teetered out from behind the massive tank she had been wheeling in when Karkat had arrived, giving Eridan a smirk across the room. “They only eat fish.”

“Doctor Lalonde, if you would cease your xenophobic prattling for a moment, perhaps we can actually brief the Deputy Marshal on the situation at hand?” Eridan stood in front of one of his massive blackboards, a ladder leaning up against it and the elbows of his expensive tailored jacket covered in multicoloured chalk dust. 

“Whatever, Eridan,” Roxy rolled her eyes and returning to her worktable, which was currently strewn with petri dishes and tubs full of samples, diagrams, and sharp medical tools sterilizing in buckets. Almost certainly there solely to bother Doctor Ampora, Dave thought, and he crossed the room as his sister waved him over, wrapping him up in a tight hug. “Glad you’re okay, Davey,” she whispered, giving him an encouraging smile. “You know I’m wicked proud of you, right?” 

He nodded, wishing he had done something actually worth being proud about, but he focused on the other side of the room and what Eridan had to say as Roxy released him and returned to her work, preserved Kaiju juices dripping down the side of the table as she got back to what appeared to be a vigorous dissection. If Dave hadn’t been present for such things in the past, he probably would have gagged.

Across the room Eridan had climbed up a few rungs of his ladder, adjusting one of his equations with a chewed up stub of chalk. Dave suspected it was literally chewed, since one of Ranger Pyrope’s more eccentric proclivities involved stealing Eridan’s writing utensils and consuming them in lieu of actual meals. He’d lodged multiple official complaints with Dave during their shared time at the Shatterdome, and Dave had responded to each and every one with more requisition orders for chalk and a total lack of sympathy. Eridan was a valued member of the Interspec team, but he was a pompous ass and constantly clashed with Roxy, leading to Dave and the rest of his siblings inevitably falling down on her side during most disputes.

Some called it Nepotism, the Strider-Lalondes just called it common sense. 

“According to my calculations,” Eridan began, climbing down from the ladder and jabbing the chalk stub in Dirk’s direction. “The increased rate of attacks can be determined on a rising curve at a variable of-” 

“You can skip the math, Doctor Ampora,” Dirk said, holding his hand out to stop the troll, who frowned down at him with an irritable flick of his gills. It was a comical sight, as Eridan was easily a foot and a half taller than the Deputy Marshal, but still deferential, and Dave had to suppress a laugh. “Just give me the details.”

Eridan huffed a little, crossing the room to a computer console and tapping data into it. “When the horrorterror attacks began in 2013 they were spaced twenty-four weeks apart. As time passed that gap became narrower, dropping down to twelve weeks, to six weeks, to two weeks, and now to one week. If they continue to escalate at this rate, we should be seeing another event, perhaps even a double event, within the next four days.” 

Dirk nodded. “That’s what the data says?” 

“Yes,” Eridan nodded. “That is my prediction.” 

From her entrail-strewn desk, Roxy snorted, a few unidentifiable Kaiju body parts falling and splattering on the floor. “Great,” she muttered. “Another one of Eridan’s famous ‘predictions’.”

“Keep the horrorterror entrails on your side of the room, Doctor Lalonde,” Eridan snapped, shuffling over to scrape the disgusting mess away with his shoe. “And your cats, the white one keeps licking me.” 

“It’s not Frigglish’s fault you taste like tuna,” Roxy smirked.

Dirk sighed. “Rox, as much as I agree that you need to corral your samples, and your pets, you do have a point. Doctor Ampora, at this point I need more than a prediction.” 

“A prediction that is derived from these calculations carries a great deal more weight than the usual connotation, Deputy Marshal,” he said, his tone snooty. “The word in Alternian we would use is-” he let out a loud series of buzzing syllables that made Roxy roll her eyes. 

“We all understand Alternian, Doctor,” Dirk said, his tone clipped. “Elaborate.” 

“Numbers are truth, Deputy Marshal,” Eridan sniffed, turning back to his computer. “Every other form of communication can be manipulated, inferred, made into something false and changeable. Numbers do not lie, and these numbers tell me that we will see a double event within the next Earth week. Then there will be two, then three, and then-” 

“Yeah, and then we’re fucked, figured that part out myself, thanks,” Dirk said, voice still short, clearly exasperated. “What does this mean for upcoming attacks?” 

“It means the Breach will stabilize,” Eridan continued, pulling a 3D simulated diagram up on the little holoprojector attached to his computer. Dave leaned over, moving one of the cats to get a better view. “If high activity stabilizes it, as my numbers predict, then we could see something even worse come through.” 

“Something worse than Kaiju?” Dave asked. “Like what?” 

“Like Alternian occupation forces,” said a quiet voice in the doorway, and Dave and Dirk turned as one to see two figures come through the door. The voice belonged to the troll woman, Aradia Megido, and she stepped smoothly around a pair of encroaching cats to deposit a small sample case onto one of Roxy’s worktables. Behind her was Jake English, and the second he could see into the room his face tightened, immediately looking everywhere but at Dirk. 

Dave saw his brother become visibly more tense, a feat he would have considered impossible in any other situation, and resisted the urge to groan. The ongoing saga of Dirk Strider and Jake English was mostly shrouded in mystery, even to the rest of Dirk’s family, but what Dave did know was enough for the awkwardness in the room to suddenly become thick like a suffocating fog. He had never cared that his brother was gay, only that his brother’s taste in men apparently turned the entire Shatterdome into an after-school special on what not to do when dating. 

Jake shuffled into the room, setting down a specimen case, which Roxy picked up before shooing him away, giving her oldest brother a dirty look. Eridan mostly looked confused, and a little annoyed at being upstaged by one of Roxy’s assistants. 

“Elaborate on that?” Dave managed, knowing Dirk wasn’t going to say a damn thing until Jake had left, the latter clearly nothing but uncomfortable tension in his gangling limbs and tanned complexion as he backed out of the room, glasses slightly askew on his face. 

Aradia began helping Roxy unload specimens onto trays, her tone very even, as if she were discussing the weather. “A stabilization of the Breach could allow for more extreme horrorterror attacks,” she said. “But could also be attributed to preparations for something far worse to come through, something more calculated than wanton destruction.” 

Dave studied Aradia, feeling the familiar sensation of being slightly creeped out wash over him. The troll had been a fixture of the research team ever since she and Sollux had arrived together in the wake of the Assault on the Breach, and while Dave clashed constantly with her boyfriend -- or matesprit, he was pretty sure that was the one that was like human dating, one of these days he’d get the hang of how quadrants worked, he swore it -- the two of them shared a mutual interest in mutated dead things and time trial drills in the sparring room. Aradia was definitely spooky, having a tendency to smile a little too long and a little too wide, but he’d take spooky over rude any day.

“Is this a theory you share, Doctor Ampora, Doctor Lalonde?” It always weirded Dave out to hear Dirk refer to their sister so formally. She was seven years Dave’s senior, and of his siblings she was the one he had spent the least amount of time with, but even then she was always still just Roxy to him. To Dirk too, most of the time, but official briefings weren’t one of those times. 

“I do,” she said, interrupting Eridan and making him scowl, gills flicking again. “But we also just don’t have enough information, and no matter how many equations you write on your little blackboard, Eridan, we still don’t have a good way of predicting just what the fuck’s gonna come through the Breach next!” 

“She’s right,” Dirk agreed, turning to Roxy as Aradia stepped out of the room, carrying a tub full of samples. “And do you have a proposition for some way to actually make those predictions, Doctor Lalonde?” 

Eridan groaned. “Oh gog, here we go.” 

Roxy ignored the troll, busily shuffling around samples and moving large chunks of unidentifiable Kaiju remains as she talked. “Okay, so we put the Kaiju in categories, right? Been doing that ever since the fuckers started shimmying their tentacled nasties through the Breach. We do that shit because they’re all different shapes, different sizes, big ones little ones, all that shit, right?” 

Dirk tried not to look annoyed at his sister. “With you so far.” 

“Okay so here’s the cool part,” she slammed two samples down on her desk in front of Dirk and Dave, juices and other suspicious fluids making an attempt to escape their confinement as she did so. “This one on the left is from a Kaiju that went down in San Francisco six years ago. The one on the right is from the Kaiju _Law and Order_ took down in Sydney earlier this week.” Her eyes sparkled, the source of the glint apparently excitement instead of her characteristic inebriation. “They’re exactly the same.” 

Dirk and Dave exchanged a glance, eyebrows raised and mouths twisted in near identical concern, before they turned back to their sister. “The fuck does that mean?” Dave asked. 

“It means the Kaiju don’t occur in nature,” Roxy said, moving the samples out of the way. “They’re _cloned_. Our assumption that they were just another part of Alternian fauna was thrown out once the Resistance came through the Breach and confirmed when we learned they were only ever seen during invasions, but that still didn’t give us enough information to know what they were, where they come from, how they’re connected to Alternians. There’s so much about them that we just don’t fucking understand.” 

“What’s to understand?” Eridan muttered. “They’re monstrosities composed entirely of tentacles and teeth that are at the murderous beck and call of a genocidal empress hell-bent on wiping out every last one of us. Seems simple enough.” 

“The fact that they’re manufactured means that there’s more to them, you krillsucking fuckwit,” Roxy said, glaring at her colleague before stepping out from behind her worktable and crossing over to the massive tank with the brain still floating in it. Dave could smell ammonia and felt a little nauseated. “My team and I harvested part of a Kaiju brain when we were in Sydney, it’s damaged but still alive. I think that if I can tap into it using the Alternian technology that lets Jaeger pilots share a neural bridge, I might be able to use that to find out what the Condesce is planning, what her next move is.” 

Dirk and Dave both stared at her, mouths slightly open. Dirk finally spoke after a long moment. “Rox, you want to Drift… with a _Kaiju?_ ” 

Roxy gave them both a sheepish smile. “Not a _whole_ Kaiju. Just a part of its brain!” 

Dirk continued to stare at her for a moment, jaw no longer on the floor but expression still completely incredulous. When he finally spoke, he sounded so completely done with everything that Dave was almost impressed.

“This easily makes the top five list of fucking catastrophic ideas you have had over the years, Roxy,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “There is no way the human brain could handle that kind of neural surge.” 

“Dirk, I’m completely serious here-” Roxy began. 

“Doctor Ampora, have your data on my desk ASAP,” Dirk said, cutting his sister off. Dave felt himself bristle involuntarily. This was harsh, even for Dirk. 

“This is bullshit,” Roxy scowled, gathering up samples, furious. “Thought we were facing the end of the world here, pretty sure that calls for pulling out all the fucking stops.” 

“Doctor Lalonde, I know your desperation is fueled deeply in the need to know that you have not wasted your pathetic human life being a horrorterror groupie, but this is quite the extreme,” Eridan said, smirking wide. 

“Fuck you, the situation calls for extremes,” she said. “It’ll work, Eridan. Fortune favors the brave.” 

“The Deputy Marshal has better things to do with Drift equipment than use it for your little experiments, Doctor,” Eridan’s voice was condescending again, reminding Dave a little too much of Vriska. “And even if he gave it to you, you’d likely kill yourself.”

Roxy snorted. “Or I’d be a fucking rock star.” 

“ENOUGH,” Dirk’s voice cut through the bickering, silencing it utterly. “It’s too dangerous, and I will not put more members of this team, of this family, at unnecessary risk.” 

Roxy froze as Eridan fell silent, and Dave could feel the two of them looking at him, feel his entire face getting hot. The shame was back, barbed and sick in his stomach, and he couldn’t look at any of them, especially Dirk. He didn’t know what was worse, Eridan’s scorn or Roxy’s sympathy. 

Dirk noticed, of course he noticed, he wasn’t an idiot, and when he spoke his tone was very short, concerned and formal. “You have your instructions,” he said, addressing the science team. “Results on my desk, and request denied. That is all.” 

As Dirk turned to leave the room, Dave saw Roxy take a tentative step towards them, her expression now very much that of a concerned sister rather than an impassioned scientist. Dave backed away a little too quickly, almost tripping over one of the cats, and followed his brother down the hall towards the elevator. Rapidly his shame was being replaced with rage. 

“The fuck was that about?” Dave snapped, catching up to Dirk as his brother tapped the elevator controls with his finger repeatedly, agitated. 

Dirk sighed, trying to regain the cool he had utterly lost as he pressed his finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. “It’s an impossible experiment and you know it,” he said, not looking at his brother. “Roxy is jumping so many guns here she’s practically a stuntwoman, I can’t sign off on something like that.” 

“Not that,” Dave said, his voice low and full of venom. “That shit about family. About unnecessary risks.” 

The elevator groaned to a stop and the doors creaked open, Dirk stepping inside without looking at him. Dave followed, now seething. When he spoke his voice was quiet, full of something Dave recognized: guilt. “Roxy’s research is invaluable to the Interspec program,” he said. “That is not a resource we can jeopardize for the sake of a dangerous experiment.” 

“Right,” Dave’s tone was pure bitterness now. “Because god forbid you let your big sister end up as fucked up as your kid brother, right?” 

He could almost feel Dirk’s jaw clench as the elevator lurched to life, pulling them upwards. “You’re…” he sighed, trying again. “You’re not fucked up, Dave, Jesus, you’re just… you’re not ready.” 

“If you have your way I’m never gonna be ready, am I?” Dave knew he should stop, he was being as insubordinate as he was being cruel. “I’ll never get to fight the Kaiju, never fight for Mom and Dad like you’ve been fighting all these years. Because you’re never gonna forgive yourself for not seeing what was happening when Rose and I were kids, are you?” 

“ _Goddamnit Dave_!” Dirk rounded on him, his face and his motion striking Dave to the core, flashes of the memories he’d encountered in the Drift, the rooftop and the swords, rising violently in his mind. Without even thinking Dave was in a defensive stance, fists at the ready, heart pounding. 

Dirk paused, expression suddenly twisting into something horrified, something sick. He took a stumbling step back, almost flat against the far wall of the elevator, and when Dave met his eyes he could see that his older brother was afraid, afraid of himself. 

“... I couldn’t protect you then,” when Dirk finally spoke his voice cracked, full of more emotion than Dave had ever heard from him. “The least I can do is protect you now.” 

Dave managed to pull himself out of the memory, lowering his fists. He sighed. “I’m not a kid any more, Dirk,” he said. “There’s some shit I have to face myself. Keeping me here, trying to hide me from it…” he sighed. “It’s holding me back.” 

He watched as his brother gave a wan smile, shaky and sad. “Funny,” he let out a hopeless little laugh as he spoke. “That’s exactly what Karkat said.” 

The two of them fell silent, returning to their previous positions side-by-side as the elevator rose, and they did not speak again until they reached Dirk’s office. Dave handed his brother his clipboard and gave him a stiff salute, knowing it hurt both of them for him to be so formal, but at this point Dave didn’t know how else to act around him without flying off the handle again. 

“Dismissed, Officer,” Dirk said, clipped and formal again, and Dave tried not to think about the way his brother looked at him, hurt and haunted, as he headed to the mess hall. 

Dave wasn’t particularly hungry, at this point he was following his routine because he was at a loss for any other way to put his life back together. The mess hall was uncharacteristically quiet when he entered, the attitudes among the Shatterdome crews somewhat subdued, and Dave felt like he was carrying their disappointment like a weight around his neck, dragging him down. He grabbed a couple slices of pizza and a bottle of apple juice, scooping sweet and sour pork onto a plate absently, knowing he needed fuel even if nothing sounded remotely appetizing. 

Crossing the mess hall, Dave could feel eyes on him and he tried to ignore the feeling, focusing on just finding a place to sit where he could shove some food in his mouth and then return to his supremely irrelevant and decidedly hopeless day. 

He realized that the mess had now fallen completely silent and he frowned, wondering what that was all about. He was sure he warranted a few stares after yesterday -- he’d almost discharged a plasma cannon through the window of the LOCCENT station, of course they were fucking staring -- but total silence was unnerving and unwarranted. 

Dave glanced up towards the other end of the mess hall and felt his stomach drop a little, felt colour rise in his cheeks, because he’d located the source of the silence, and it wasn’t just him, it was the fact that he was standing in the middle of the mess hall with his tray and Karkat Vantas was there, also holding his food and staring at him with an expression Dave could hardly fathom. Sympathy? Pity? God he hoped it wasn’t pity, that was the last thing he needed. As he looked at the troll his mind brought memories up to the surface, unbidden, the Drift dragging him back to that day in the cockpit of _Miracle_ , the bleeding scratch marks across Gamzee’s face, the feeling of him being torn away from Karkat, the sudden ache of his absence… 

He sucked in a breath and gave Karkat a nod, which he returned and followed with a glare that he directed at the other inhabitants of the mess hall, a quintessential ‘what the fuck are you looking at?’ expression that made Dave almost laugh. It was a face Karkat had been making almost constantly since he had arrived. 

Dave crossed the mess hall, Karkat waiting for him at the exit, and the two of them fell into step as they left, crossing the atrium in silence. Dave didn’t have to ask where they were going, and Karkat didn’t have to answer, it was obvious to the both of them there was only one place they would actually feel comfortable after everything that had happened to them. 

_Prometheus_ was backlit by construction crews running routine maintenance checks, and so the two of them sat on the rickety steps that lined the bay, eating their lunch and watching as massive cranes adjusted the chrome paneling across her chest. Dave barely tasted his food, eating it automatically, and exchanged an occasional awkward glance with the troll before Karkat apparently just couldn’t stand it any more and spoke. 

“Look,” his voice was low, not quite a growl but close. “I… I’m sorry.” 

Dave raised his eyebrows. “For what?” 

“Not giving you some warning, for one thing,” Karkat sighed, dabbing a beefgrub strip in sauce idly. “First Drifts are pretty much the fucking worst, there’s no way to prep for them even if you’ve seen other people do it a billion goddamn times, gone through a ton of simulations, whatever, it still feels…” he trailed off, shrugging. 

“Like somebody’s sucking your brain out through a vacuum and jamming it in a blender?” Dave suggested. 

Karkat shrugged. “Basically. All I know is, when you and I Drifted, you didn’t just get hit in the thinkpan with all of my memories, you also got a nuclear-sized helping of my moirail.” He sighed again. “Gamzee and I were still connected when that fucking monstrosity took him, so I could feel everything, I felt the pain, the helplessness, the fear… and then nothing.” 

Dave put down his fork, Gamzee’s face suddenly hovering in the forefront of his mind again, and swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “Felt that. Felt it hard.” 

Karkat picked apart his grubcake with his claws, looking away. “Felt everything you went through too,” he said. “I…” he seemed ashamed, though Dave couldn’t understand why. “Fuck, I had no idea that kind of thing could happen here on Earth. You’ve been through shit in your life that’d wreck most trolls, nevermind humans.” 

Dave put his tray to one side, opening the bottle of juice and taking a sip, trying to put off the inevitable question for as long as possible. “So…” he began, trailing off before he managed to collect himself. “You saw everything that happened to me?” 

Karkat shook his head. “Felt,” he corrected. “And not everything, just what you went through in the memories.” He was clearly uncomfortable, and Dave couldn’t blame him, god knew he felt the same way. After a moment Karkat glanced across at him, setting his own food tray aside. “So, you and Rose,” he began, thinking a little before he managed to gather his question. “You… were given the wrong genders when you were born?” 

Dave nodded, feeling a lot less embarrassed about it than he’d anticipated. “Far as I know being transgender isn’t really a thing trolls do,” he said. “But it’s not exactly common in humans either.” 

“You were both wigglers when you figured it out?” 

“Yeah,” he nodded again. “Right after our parents died.” 

Karkat was quiet for a moment. “San Francisco, right?” 

“First Kaiju attack,” Dave said, his voice a little hollow. “The whole family was on vacation, seeing the sights and shit. Fucker ripped right through downtown, destroyed everything. Mom and Dad, fuck, they were fighters, both of them were strong, trained, ready, but they couldn’t stop a Kaiju, no matter how hard they tried.” 

“They saved you,” Karkat said. It was a statement, not a question. 

“Sent us away while they distracted it,” Dave said. He could remember it all so clearly despite how young he’d been at the time. “Mom piled us all into a car, and Rose and I saw the fucking thing tear her in half through the back window as we drove away.” 

Karkat winced, and Dave figured he’d seen similar destruction. When it came to Kaiju, that shit was hard to avoid. “How old were you?” the troll asked. 

“Ten.” 

Karkat sucked in a breath, frowning in sympathy. Dave felt a surge of disgust at himself briefly - talking about the past was quite possibly the least Striderian thing a person could do - before he let himself admit that no, this was actually okay to talk about. He’d spoken to his sisters, even his brother about it before, but none of them had been inside his head, had actually _felt_ what it had been like. It was strange, almost comforting, like for once in his life Dave knew that it was okay to talk about what he’d been through. 

Karkat was asking questions again. “And the others? Your hatchmates?” He squinted his eyes, grimacing. “Sorry, ‘siblings’. I’ll never get used to how humans work.” 

“S’ok,” Dave waved it off. It wasn’t like he’d ever get used to trolls. “Rose and I are twins. Dirk was sixteen, Roxy was seventeen.” He paused a moment, feeling a coldness wash over him as he thought about it. “Dean was twenty.” 

“Your Bro,” Karkat clarified, looking a little sick. 

“Yeah,” Dave said. He couldn’t blame the troll. Thinking about his Bro always made him feel sick too. “He wanted to join the Defense Corps as soon as it got set up, but Rose and I were too young, we needed someone to take care of us. So Roxy and Dirk joined up, and Bro took me and Rose back to Texas.” He swallowed. “You saw the highlight reel for how that went.” 

Karkat looked away again, ashamed. “I… had no idea.” 

“Most people don’t,” Dave said, shrugging. “My family knows, at least they know the facts. Closest I’ve got to a person who understands what I went through is Rose, and even though she was there, I kept her away from the worst of it every chance I got.” 

_Which means the only other person who_ actually _knew what it had felt like living through all that was the troll sitting with him right now_ , he thought, but didn’t say it. Of course, it was obvious, he didn’t need to state it when he knew Karkat was fully aware of it. Didn’t make it any less uncomfortable, though Dave wondered if maybe he should have felt more upset about it. Having someone else poking around in his head was an invasion of privacy, wasn’t it? 

The Drift was different though. He couldn’t explain how it was different, but Dave just knew that it was. It hadn’t just been Karkat traipsing through his memories, Dave had gotten an all-access look at all of Karkat’s pain and misery too, and feeling Gamzee get ripped away was worlds apart from reading about what had happened in a file. 

Dave felt the silence weigh heavy between them and he picked his tray up again, returning to his food. “Sorry,” he said. “You were there in my head, no reason I gotta fling all this shit at you again, trained monkey style.” He sighed. 

“Whatever,” Karkat rolled his eyes. “Like you weren’t punched in the digestion sac with the fucked up hell that constitutes my thinkpan. Pretty sure you can sling as much mammalian fecal matter at me as you like and it’ll be met with at least some degree of understanding.” 

Dave looked at Karkat, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Wow, dude,” he said. “That’s fucking gross.” 

“Oh fuck you, Strider,” the troll snarled, picking up a crust of bread and throwing it at him. “I was trying to carry through the disgusting human metaphor you provided.” 

“And you made a goddamn mess of it, Karkat,” Dave retorted, ducking out of the way of the flying pastry. “Jegus, that was some disastrous wordplay, college English teachers across the globe are weeping into their alcoholic beverages.” 

Karkat stared at him, expression some kind of cross between disgusted and incredulous. “I don’t care if I’ve been inside your head,” he said. “You still make absolutely no fucking sense, Strider.” 

“Nothing can penetrate the land of non-sequiturs and mayhem that constitutes my psyche,” Dave replied, radiating pride. “I am the human embodiment of obfuscating bullshit.” 

“Truer words were never spoken,” Karkat rumbled, his voice low again, but almost pleasant, as he returned to his food. 

They continued to eat, comfortable and calm as the engineering crews continued to work on _Prometheus_. Dave couldn’t help but feel wistful as he looked at her, remembering how good it had felt to be strapped into her harness, moving in perfect synchronization with his co-pilot. Dave had been through a lot in his life, but nothing had felt quite so right, so true to the core of who he was, as being in that cockpit. 

Karkat let out a small chuckle, hoarse and almost bitter. “I had Gamzee in my head for sweeps,” he said. “I got so used to knowing exactly what he was thinking, what he was feeling, fuck, I knew him better than I knew myself. When he was gone I…” he trailed off, folding his arms in a gesture that managed to make the six and a half foot tall troll look almost vulnerable. “It was just so fucking _quiet_ all the time. That’s been the worst part. Not the nightmares, not trying to work in construction, just that silence, that’s what’s fucked me up so hard for the last two and a half sweeps.”

Dave nodded, sympathetic despite having never experienced the feeling himself. He didn’t have to - he’d felt it when they had been in the Drift together. “Guess we’re both pretty fucked up, huh?” he said. 

Karkat nodded, leaning back against one of the metal support beams. “Yeah,” he said, tone a little hopeless. “That’s us.” 

The quiet returned, still comfortable, and stayed a while as they finished their food. Dave couldn’t remember the last time he’d just hung out quietly with someone, and it was strange. Strange, but good. 

As they sat, Dave watched as the engineering crews began to scatter, _Prometheus_ ’s chassis slowly swinging open to expose the massive glowing core at the Jaeger’s center. Across from him he heard Karkat suck in a breath and turned to see the troll staring at the massive machine, his expression as wistful as Dave’s had been earlier. 

“Her heart,” Dave said, Karkat turning to look at him as he spoke. “It’s all _Miracle_ in there.” 

Karkat definitely looked nostalgic now, his face twisted in an expression that wasn’t quite sadness, but also not entirely warm either. Dave was surprised at how quickly he was picking up on the nuances of the troll’s expressions. “Fuck,” he breathed. “That’s really all _Miracle_?” 

“Her core was the largest piece we could salvage,” Dave said, feeling pride curl in his stomach. “Damaged, but intact. So that’s all her.” 

Karkat kept staring, and Dave kept watching the expressions as they shifted across his face. There was pain, there was comfort, the tug of the past and the promise of the future. “Still fucking beautiful,” he murmured, arms tightening over his chest a little. “Like the first time I saw her.” 

Dave felt the despair he’d been trying to avoid rise up in his gut and gnaw at him. “Well,” he said, looking away. “I’m just sorry the closest thing you found to a viable co-pilot happens to be me and my utterly busted brain.” 

“Hey,” Karkat’s voice was biting, serious, and Dave turned to see the troll glaring at him. “I don’t give a fuck what’s going on in that brain of yours, Strider, I don’t care if it turns out you really are as jacked up in the thinkpan as I am, but I know that those few minutes where we actually synced up, where we actually connected…” Karkat trailed off, making another expression Dave couldn’t quite place, his eyes darting to the side and his fangs hanging slightly over his lower lip. “The Drift was fucking strong. I piloted _Miracle_ for sweeps with Gamzee and I’ve never felt a Drift that strong.” 

Dave was a little surprised. “Is that right?” he said, trying to keep his tone casual. What was it about Karkat that kept giving him this sense of ridiculous hope? 

“I know Dirk grounded you, but that doesn’t mean we should give up,” Karkat continued. “If we can work through whatever the fuck all this is in our heads?” He met Dave’s eyes through the shades, his expression determined, tenacious. “I think we can convince him.” 

Dave felt something warm rise in his chest, feeling ridiculous and confident and like this was both completely stupid and also totally inevitable. “How?” 

Karkat unfolded his arms, leaning forward to watch as the engineering team carefully closed up Prometheus again. “We train,” he said, his voice grave, still serious. “We spar and we use the simulator and read reports on horrorterror attacks and talk to the other pilots and do so much fucking work that the next time we get in her cockpit, our test Drift in _Prometheus_ is the stuff of goddamn legends.” 

“Oh, is that all?” Dave couldn’t help but laugh, exasperated. “‘Hey Dave, no pressure but let’s spend every waking moment trying to unfuck our colossal mess with no way of knowing if it’ll actually convince your overprotective and also justified brother that we should be allowed to set foot in a fucking Jaeger’. Is that what you’re suggesting?” 

Karkat turned to face him, looking exactly as exasperated as Dave felt. “Yes, Dave,” he said, his voice still serious. “That is exactly what I am suggesting.” 

Dave gave him a long look, resting the thumb and index finger of his left hand under his chin in a gesture of exaggerated ponderance. “Well, other than horrific mental trauma, insubordination, going completely batshit insane, and potentially destroying the entire Shatterdome, what have we got to lose?” 

Karkat rolled his eyes. “That’s the spirit,” he said, annoyed. “Jesus, how is it I know all the fucked up shit you went through and I _still_ think you’re an insufferable prick?” 

“The same reason I can know all the bullshit you went through and still think you’re an arrogant fuckhead,” Dave replied, amiable. “They’re empirical facts.” 

Karkat scowled. “Dick.”

“Smug tool.”

“Nooksniffer.”

“Nubbyhorns.”

They both turned away, Dave suspecting the grin on his own face was mirrored in the troll’s expression. He felt better, a lot better, and he was pretty sure Karkat did too. “So,” he said after a pause. “I guess that means ‘where doin this man’?” 

Karkat squinted at him, confused. “What?” 

“Us,” Dave said, gesturing between the two of them. “‘Where makin this hapen’.” 

Karkat’s squint turned into a scowl. “Strider, what the fuck are you even saying?” 

Dave rolled his eyes even though he knew the gesture was lost behind his shades. “It’s a meme, dude,” he said. “It’s what we say around here when shit’s about to go down. Trust me, you’ll get the hang of it.” 

“Fuck your stupid meme,” Karkat growled. “Why can’t you just say yes like a normal fucking person?” 

Dave wiggled his eyebrows, knowing he was being obnoxious. It felt good, felt almost like things were going to be okay. “Because where’s the irony in that?” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Karkat stood up, picking up his tray. “Meet me at the simulator at 1600 hours,” he said. “Minus the bullshit. Then we can get to work.” 

“All right,” Dave gave him a cheery wave as Karkat walked away, surprised at how much he meant it. He was excited, he was hopeful, he wasn’t giving up. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but Dave liked it. He called over his shoulder at Karkat’s retreating back. “‘Let’s make shit take place’.”

“AND NO MORE GODDAMN MEMES, YOU DOUCHE. FUCKING HELL.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten chapters in! I told you things would get a little happier! Up next: training montage!
> 
> I've been getting so many kind and lovely comments from people on this fic and I just wanted to say thank you for all of your support! Things are picking up work-wise this semester but I still read all your comments and feel warm and fuzzy inside to know people appreciate what I'm doing here. Thanks for reading!


	11. The Only Hope For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (TW: Homophobic slurs (in flashbacks))

_If there's a place that I could be_  
_Then I'd be another memory_  
_Can I be the only hope for you?_  
_Because you're the only hope for me_  
_And if we can't find where we belong_  
_We'll have to make it on our own_  
_Face all the pain and take it on_  
_Because the only hope for me is you alone_  
\-- From ‘The Only Hope For Me Is You’ by My Chemical Romance  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xAzqKEYaCs))

__ 

“Two days,” Marshal Egbert said, fingers steepled as he leaned forward over his desk, looking at Karkat. “That’s all I can give you.”

 “Sir,” Dirk Strider looked livid, pacing around the office like a caged animal. Karkat couldn’t help but feel smug satisfaction at his indignance, and resisted the urge to tell him to suck it. “I want it on the record that I am completely against this idea.”

“It is so noted, Deputy,” the Marshal said, his face neutral. He seemed to always have a neutral expression, and for once Karkat didn’t find that annoying. Hell, he found it downright glorious when Dirk’s response was to scowl even harder. “Ranger Vantas, I want you to know that I am doing this against my better judgment, and only because I have been made aware of the unusual strength of the Drift you share with the younger Strider. I will give you one more chance to prove the two of you are able to handle a Jaeger, but that is all. Are we clear?”

“Yes sir,” Karkat snapped a salute, trying not to let his face betray his excitement. It was going to be brutal, difficult, and more than likely a huge pain in his ass, but he was ready to make it happen.

“Very well,” Marshal Egbert gave him a smile. “Test Drift is scheduled for two days from now at 0800 hours. You are dismissed. Deputy,” he nodded to Dirk, and as Karkat left he couldn’t help but feel darkly pleased that he could hear Dirk protesting the decision and being summarily shot down through the closed door of the Marshal’s office. They’d show him. They’d show everyone. 

Dave was waiting for him outside the simulator, looking tired but ready to work, and he gave Karkat a thumbs up as he approached. “Ready to wreck some virtual Kaiju ass?”

“I’m not even going to begin to dissect everything wrong with the sentence that just fell out of your faceflap, Strider,” he growled, rolling up his sleeves and plugging parameters into the simulator console. “What do you want to start with? Looks like this thing’s got data for every horrorterror ever spawned.”

“I got this,” Dave gently elbowed Karkat to one side, making the troll growl in annoyance, and tapped a few keys on the console. “Let’s start with this guy, he’s one of my favourites.” 

“‘Separator’,” Karkat read on the screen over his shoulder, making a face. “A Cat 3? Don’t we want to start with something smaller?” 

“Please,” Dave snorted, though his voice sounded a little too arrogant, a little too confident. He was posturing, and it was pissing Karkat off. “I’ve been taking down Cat 3 Kaiju in simulations for years, why would I step down now?” 

“Maybe because you’ll be Drifting with me and not the AI?” Karkat snapped, his patience thin. “Correct me if I’m wrong but you’ve never been able to run a simulation with an actual co-pilot, am I right?” 

“Yeah?” Dave’s confident smile was wavering, clearly uncomfortable about the topic, but that gave Karkat all the more reason to press him. “So?”

“So, you think the Drift’s gonna be any less brutal just because we’re not actually in _Prometheus_?” he tried to be patient but they were already wasting time just having this discussion, and he was close to losing his temper. “You’re still gonna be back in my head, still reliving all the shit you went through, and it’s still gonna fuck us over if we don’t start small and work out way up.” 

Dave scowled at him, but Karkat could see something more in his eyes. He was afraid. “I know that,” he said. “Just… hold on,” he tapped the console again, making some adjustments, not looking at Karkat. He clearly hated that Karkat was right, and the troll had to resist the urge to smirk. “There,” he said, grudgingly, gesturing to the console so Karkat could give his approval. “Superbass. Early-era Cat 2. Low on tentacles, high on maneuverability. Does that meet your exacting standards, Ranger Vantas?”

Only Dave Strider could make Karkat winning an argument feel like a loss. He glared at the human, nodded once, and hit the button to start the simulation. Dave’s smile was back to smug again, and Karkat resisted the urge to punch him. 

They stepped into the simulator and grabbed combat suits out of the lockers before heading to the practice harnesses. Karkat heard the voice of the Artificial Intelligence echoing in his ears once his helmet was on, functioning as LOCCENT control. “ _Welcome to the Hong Kong Shatterdome Artificial Simulated Training Environment, Ranger Vantas. ‘Hello, Dave’_.” 

“Hal, that has literally never been funny,” Dave said, and Karkat could almost feel him rolling his eyes. “Think you can cut that the fuck out when I’ve actually got a co-pilot?”

A brief pause. “ _‘I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t-’_ ” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Dave huffed out an exasperated sigh and Karkat resisted the urge to laugh, getting the reference. “Bet you’ve never had to deal with an AI that thinks it’s a comedian, have you Karkat?” 

“Can’t say I have,” he said, feeling anxiety spike in him as the harness connected to the back plate of his combat suit. “Seems to enjoy ripping on you though, so I’m not complaining.” 

“Great,” Dave stretched his arms as the harness clipped onto his suit. “Making an allegiance with my virtual nemesis, can you be more of an asshole, Karkat?” 

“I don’t know, can you be more of a douche, Dave?” 

Karkat wasn’t sure how an artificial intelligence could sound smarmy, but Hal was succeeding at it.“ _If you two are done flirting, can we please get back to the simulation?_ ” 

“WE’RE NOT FLIRTING!” Karkat yelled, then blinked, because Dave had yelled it at the exact same time. They glanced at each other, Karkat seeing Dave’s cheeks were red and knowing his probably were too, and then looked away, focusing. It was just a side-effect of the Drift, Karkat told himself. He and Gamzee had spoken in unison all the time, it wasn’t that weird. 

“ _Uh huh, sure,_ ” Hal said. “ _Remember boys, denial is a river in Egypt_.”

Karkat squinted, realizing he recognized the voice and feeling his face form into an exasperated glare. “Dave, why does the AI sound like your brother?” 

“Because it was programmed from a scan of Dirk’s brain,” Dave replied nonchalantly. “He and Roxy set up the Artificial Regulator when they were cadets. Now the AR, or as we call him ‘Lil Hal’, is the primary OS for all Shatterdome functions.” 

Karkat shook his head in disbelief. “Anyone ever tell you that your family is fucked up, Strider?” 

“Every goddamn day,” Dave said, shaking his arms out again as Hal began to count down. “Okay Hal, let’s do this.” 

“ _Neural Interface Drift Initiated_.” 

Karkat felt the sucking sensation in his mind and gave in to the Drift easily, closing his eyes and letting the memories wash over him in flashes of sight and sound. He was standing outside his old hive on Alternia, he was chained to a line of lowblood slaves being dragged onto a starship, he was swinging a pair of sickles at a subjuggulator as he and Gamzee charged through corridors flashing with red light, they were curled up together in a horn pile, his moirail’s hand resting on his face… 

The memories dispersed, swirling unbidden with unfamiliar sights, new smells, the stink of cordite from gunpowder followed by the flash of fireworks, a picnic by the ocean, a human woman with blonde hair and tanned skin smiling while reading aloud, a man in a pair of aviator shades holding a sword and giving a thumbs up… 

Karkat gasped, suddenly firmly back in the simulation. He brought his arms up slowly, seeing, no, _feeling_ Dave do the same, and he let out a slow breath. The connection, the unity, the sense of purpose washed over him, and he’d almost forgotten how good it felt to have someone else sharing his head. 

Even if that someone else was Dave Strider. 

“ _Right hemisphere calibrated. Left hemisphere calibrated. Beginning simulation in three… two… one._ ” 

Karkat watched the readings on the screen in front of him, suddenly blaring to life as they detected a horrorterror signature. They were in ocean shallows, waves lapping and crashing around them, and the monster was swimming towards them, approaching impossibly fast. 

“Big sucker,” Dave breathed, and they brought the left arm of their Jaeger around to block the inevitable blow the beast would deal. As Karkat brought his arm up he was violently hit with two different memories, feeling the wind get knocked out of him as he saw the flurry of tentacles ripping Gamzee out of the cockpit, the impossibly huge teeth snapping Bro up from the San Francisco streets… 

“ _Pilots out of alignment_ ,” Hal’s voice echoed around the virtual cockpit and Karkat groaned, trying to fight the memories, trying to stay calm, but he could feel it, feel himself slipping, falling back _into the cockpit, he’s bleeding, there’s blood fucking everywhere, and Gamzee is screaming, the noise is so fucking awful as it blends with the shrieks of the horroterror, the sick tearing sound of metal plating overridden by the agony, the feeling of teeth on flesh-_  

“Hal, terminate simulation!” Dave’s voice cut through the horrific visions, which vanished around him as the Drift sequence terminated. 

Karkat slumped in the practice harness, feeling bile and the grubcake he’d eaten for breakfast rise in his throat. He fought it down, closing his eyes while his head spun, and before he could register what was happening he felt strong arms guiding him down to the floor, supporting his head before lowering it carefully. Karkat blinked, disoriented, and realized that he was shaking. Around him he heard Hal’s electronic voice say “ _simulation terminated_ ” and he groaned, kicking himself. Fuck, he’d Rabbited, all that bullshit to get to this point and he’d fucking Rabbited. 

He opened his eyes to find Dave leaning over him, clearly concerned despite his eyes being hidden by his stupid glasses. “Dude, you okay?” 

Karkat growled and sat up a little too fast, dizzy but shoving Dave out of his way. “I’m fine, asshole,” he snapped. “Congratulations, we’re both Rabbits, great show everyone, come again, we’ll be here all fucking day.” 

“It’s cool man,” Dave said, staggering back a little at Karkat’s shove but recovering quickly, dusting off his fatigues and standing up, offering a hand. “We knew this wasn’t gonna be easy.” 

“Says the guy who didn’t just nearly spew his half-digested breakfast all over the sim room,” Karkat grumbled, taking Dave’s hand reluctantly as the human helped him to his feet. His palm was warm, pleasantly so, and not sweaty like Karkat had been expecting. Once he was steady on his feet he let go, crossing his arms over his chest and huffing. “That was a fucking disaster.” 

“Not as big a disaster as the first time,” Dave pointed out, stepping over to the console near the door and tapping a few keys. “Hal, how long did we manage to Drift before shit went completely fucking pear-shaped?” 

“ _One minute, twenty-six seconds,_ ” Hal’s modulated voice echoed around the simulation chamber. “ _I’d call that half of a pear shape, Dave_.” 

“Fuck you,” Dave snapped at the AI, and for once Karkat agreed with him. “Okay, so maybe jumping right into a simulation isn’t gonna cut it, not when it looks like both of us are a psychologist’s wet dream the way our heads are at.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Karkat huffed again. He knew it was stupid to argue that point with the guy who had literally just _been_ in his fucked up head, but he was shaky and contrary and the urge to needle Dave was too strong to hold back. “My thinkpan’s a picture of health.” 

“Keep telling yourself that, Vantas,” Dave said, his tone snide, and he plugged more data points into the simulator. “Okay, so I know our time is running out so fast it’s practically winning olympic medals for sprinting, but if we’re gonna make this shit take place then we need to figure out how the fuck we can Drift without getting knocked on our asses outright.” 

“Thank you captain fucking obvious,” Karkat snarled, folding his arms a little tighter. “Any other pointless suggestions? You gonna tell me to think happy thoughts? Clap my hands if I believe?” 

Dave put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Chill the fuck out there, Pupa Pan, don’t be snippy just because I’m right.” 

“I’m ‘snippy’ because we don’t have time for this,” Karkat replied. “We have to run full simulations, it’s the only way they’ll ever let us set foot in _Prometheus_ again.” 

“Just humour me,” Dave said, lowering his hands. “Let’s try it my way once and then we can go back to getting our asses served up like we’re dudes on butler island.”

“Oh, blow it out your ass, douchebag,” Karkat scowled at Dave, but relented, returning to the simulation harness and strapping in. “Let’s fail spectacularly at your stupid bullshit idea and get the fuck back to business.” 

“Such a sweet talker,” Dave said, oozing sarcasm as he strapped into his own harness. “Look at me blush. Hal, initiate test Drift program.” 

“ _Program initiated_ ,” Hal said. “ _Have fun boys_.” 

Karkat felt it again, his thinkpan suddenly squeezed through impossibly small pipes and then flung apart like it was spattered against a wall. He Drifted, focused on staying aimless and moving past each memory instead of latching on. He couldn’t help but feel annoyed, he’d done this part before, as long as he had something to do he could keep his thinkpan away from the worst memories. He didn’t see the point.

“The point is to practice,” Dave said aloud, and Karkat scowled at him. “Get used to being in the Drift together. And to help pull each other out of shit if one of us goes in too deep.” 

“Eat a human dick,” Karkat muttered, letting his mind wander further, into the melded parts of the Drift where his memories ended and Dave’s began. This was going to fucking suck, he just knew it.

Three hours and fifteen simulated Drifts later, none of them involving horrorterrors, Karkat dragged himself out of the harness so he could go throw up in the corner. Hal made a derogatory comment as Dave flipped the AI terminal off, also unclipping so he could provide moral support, rubbing the troll’s back while wincing. Karkat tried not think about just how pale the gesture was, or how much it actually helped. 

By the time the two of them had managed to successfully stay in the Drift for at least an hour, Karkat was exhausted, angry, and ready to break someone’s neck if he didn’t get something to eat. Dave was in much the same humour, and he went to get them a couple trays of food while Karkat went to the sparring room. He hadn’t even had to tell Dave what he wanted, or that he’d wanted anything at all, and it was those little side-effects of Drifting that made him actually feel better about the entire situation. 

There was just something so easy about knowing what somebody else was thinking at any given moment, something reassuring about going to set up a training regimen in the sparring room that played to both his strengths and Dave’s strengths while also challenging each other’s weak spots. Sure, Dave deliberately didn’t put enough grub sauce on Karkat’s tray and Karkat went out of his way to spitefully focus on building regimens that forced Dave to fight with his fists instead of a sword, but it was still a level of knowing each other’s minds that he could appreciate. 

By the time the first twenty-four hours of intense training were through, Karkat was exhausted, his fatigues were soaked with sweat, and his muscles ached, but above all he was just... confused. More irritated and confused than he had ever been in all thirteen and three quarter sweeps of his life. Confused about his feelings for his co-pilot. 

It wasn’t a problem with Dave being human. Karkat had been living on Earth long enough to freely acknowledge that he was more than capable of interspecies attraction, and had spent plenty of downtime between shifts on the Wall exploring the bars and bedrooms of many coastal cities. Being a war hero went a long way for a whirlwind of trying to forget one’s problems via one night stands and weekend benders exploring this strange human soporific called alcohol. 

It certainly wasn’t that Dave was unattractive, either, Karkat had already put that one out on the table where he could see it, and he kept seeing it, again and again, especially during their particularly intense hand-to-hand combat sessions. The first time they tried hand-to-hand again he’d stood on one end of the mat, barefoot and shirtless while Dave did the same, the crescent-shaped scars on his chest somehow more fascinating, almost more appealing, now that Karkat understood what they were from. 

“Did it hurt?” he’d asked Dave. This had been after one of their sessions in the simulator where the memory he’d wandered into in his co-pilot’s head had been of his experience getting that crucial surgery that helped his outside reflect his inside identity. 

“They opened me up and pulled a bunch of fat out of my chest and sewed me up again,” Dave said, rolling his eyes. He still wore his shades everywhere but Karkat was getting better at detecting his exasperation. “It felt so good they had to get me a bucket after.” 

“Oh eat shit,” Karkat had replied, returning the eyeroll. “It was a better question than ‘holy jegus that looks like it was painful as fuck’.” 

Dave shrugged. “Worth it,” he said. “Anything that makes me feel better about that shit’s gonna be worth any pain I have to go through.” 

Karkat’s scars had very different stories that went with them, and he told those too, as his own memories brought them to the surface regularly in the Drift not long after he’d learned more about his co-pilot’s experiences. As they ducked and weaved together during the sparring session, fists out and legs darting, Karkat could tell that Dave wanted to ask about it, the curving mark on the back of his neck that he wished he could forget existed. 

“They branded us,” he said, dodging out of the way of Dave’s fist. Dave didn’t ask how Karkat knew he was curious. It was just how the Drift worked. “The Subjuggulators.”

Dave winced sympathetically, but then smiled in a way that made Karkat’s fists itch to make contact with his co-pilot’s face. “Did it hurt?” 

He growled in response. “It fucking tickled,” he said, catching Dave in the shoulder and knocking him back, following through with a quick uppercut he knew Dave would be able to block. “I laughed when the giant clown fuck shoved the searing hot metal onto the back of my neck, it was a fuckin’ gas.” 

“Dude, I was there,” Dave replied with a smirk, making Karkat grit his teeth as he grabbed for the human, missing by millimeters. “You don’t have to play macho with me, I know you cried.” 

“I WAS FOUR SWEEPS OLD.” 

“Awww, poor widdle grubbie Karkat.” 

“EAT SHIT!” 

At this last exclamation Karkat grabbed Dave under his arms and brought him down hard on the mat, Dave struggling for a grip and tipping them over sideways so that they rolled right to the edge of the padded blue surface. They wrestled briefly, rolling a few more times back to the center, and eventually Karkat came up on top, pinning Dave and smirking down at him, his co-pilot’s shades sliding off his face.

“Jesus,” Dave muttered, blinking and squinting a little in the sudden light, and as Karkat stared down at his co-pilot’s red irises, he felt a flushed urge wash over him, a black urge, the sudden stirring curiosity as to how it would feel to press Dave down hard into the mat, find his lips with his teeth… 

Suddenly they had flipped again and Dave was the one smirking down at him, his breathing uneven from the effort. “Nice try,” he said. “But you can’t expect me to give up just because I lost my sweet shades.” 

Karkat growled, collecting himself and trying not to think about how he felt like it was suddenly very hot in the training room, was that just him? (Or just Dave?) “They look fucking ridiculous.” 

“Fuck you, I need them so I’m not constantly blinded by the light,” Dave said, shifting back to stand up. “Albinism is a bitch like that.” He took Karkat’s hands and pulled him up with him. Karkat was suddenly very aware of how Dave’s hands felt in his, of how the human smelled of sweat and coconut shampoo and something earthy, like clay that had baked dry under a hot sun. 

He turned away so Dave couldn’t see all the blood rushing to his face. He felt a little sick at himself, this was so incredibly _wrong_ of him. Dave was his co-pilot, for fuck’s sake, if they were going to wind up in any quadrant, it’d have to be a pale one, right? But what was he even feeling right now? He’d been feeling pitch, _really_ pitch, for a moment there, and then suddenly he was thinking about how good Dave smelled? That was some red quadrant shit right there. What the fuck was happening to him? 

“Hey man, you good?” Dave asked, retrieving his glasses and returning them to their rightful place on his nose.

“Fine,” Karkat snapped, shoving down any hint of an interest in exploring the sudden surge of feelings he had just had for his co-pilot. Fuck this, he needed to concentrate. “Let’s go again.” 

It wasn’t just the flushed feelings that were a problem, though they were really fucking obnoxious, it was how they could suddenly flip to pale feelings in the blink of a goddamned eye. He should have been glad for the times that he felt the tuggings of moirallegiance rise in him, usually when the two of them were eating, were talking, were fighting in their simulated Jaeger. Pale feelings were the normal option for pilots, were the status quo, at least for Trolls. These never lasted though, almost always flipping back to deep pitch or an even more confusing red flush. If anything, the increased pale feelings that seemed to flare up out of nowhere between different torrid emotional leanings made Karkat feel even worse, like he was even more broken in the thinkpan. 

The worst of it was in the middle of that first night after their marathon training session, both of them having dozed off in the training room after several hours of pouring over tactical scenarios. Karkat jerked awake to the sound of choked sobs and whimpers of fear, and he looked blearily across the squishy blue mat to where Dave lay, curled up over a stack of open strategy files and twitching violently, still asleep. 

“Dave,” he called, soft at first, not wanting to frighten him. He’d had enough nightmares to know how things could potentially go when his co-pilot woke up. “Dave?” 

He heard Dave whimper again and then let out a little cry, something heart-wrenching that became all the more painful when Karkat began to make out the words the human was mumbling into the papers scattered around him. “No… I can do it… please, Bro… I promise... No… stop…” 

Karkat crawled across the training mat, moving some of the papers aside, and gently shook Dave by the shoulder, trying not to startle him. “Dave,” he kept his voice low. “Dave, wake up.” 

“Bro NO!” Dave jerked awake, one of his hands jerking up and grabbing Karkat’s arm, eyes snapping open and filled with fear. “No!” 

“Dave!” Karkat tried to stay steady even as Dave thrashed a little, wild-eyed and still half-dreaming, and he once again found himself placing a hand on Dave’s cheek, pressing his palm against it over and over again while whispering: “Shoosh, shoosh, it’s a dream, Dave, it’s a dream.” 

Dave blinked, disoriented, a few tears rolling out of the corners of his eyes, and with a wordless sob he flung himself up into Karkat’s arms, face buried in the troll’s chest. 

“Shoosh,” Karkat whispered again, papping his co-pilot gently as he hugged him, chest beginning to rumble with soothing clicks and chirrs, and ghosts of the past wandering through his thinkpan, memories of Gamzee when he was low on sopor and starting to feel the worst of the withdrawals. “Shoosh.” This was okay. Of course it was okay, they were co-pilots, and even co-pilots of a different species could comfort each other when they were dealing with their respective demons. This was fine.

Then Dave leaned back a little, looking up at Karkat through the tears in his eyes, and he looked absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, his bottom lip still shaking a bit from the sobs and his cheeks flushed, expression still slightly dazed but cogent, eyes deep red like the Alternian sun. 

Karkat sucked in a breath, chirrs dying in his throat. Nope, those were not pale feelings. Those feelings were not pale at all. Jegus fuck, _deep red like the Alternian sun_? Karkat’s thinkpan had just turned into a really cheesy troll romance novel and he felt embarrassed to know himself. Fuck he was a mess. 

Dave seemed to realize what was happening right around the same time Karkat did, and he slumped back down, cheeks now bright red, clearly embarrassed that he’d been caught upset over a nightmare. He wiped his eyes off hastily, shuffling back a little bit, and started picking up his scattered files, not looking at him. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Bad dream.” 

“S’ok,” Karkat said, sitting up and pressing his hands together, anxious, feeling like a creepy asshole. It didn’t matter how much time he spent in Dave’s head, quadrants just weren’t something humans could usually deal with, hell, they were something _Karkat_ apparently had trouble dealing with. 

“Were you…” Dave had an odd look on his face, not upset but very much uncertain, like he was putting together the pieces of a puzzle that had confused him for a long time. “Shooshpapping me?” 

Karkat felt his cheeks burn and his bloodpusher clench, and he looked away. “Yeah,” he admitted. No sense lying to the guy who basically lived in his brain. “Sorry, I heard you and it was just… a reflex.” 

“Nah,” Dave shook his head, holding out a hand, the other hunting around the surrounding area for his glasses. “Nah, man, it’s cool, I… get it.” 

“You do?” Karkat was surprised. If there was one thing he remembered from his first encounter with Dave Strider (just a few days ago, how had it been just a few days? After everything they had been through together it felt like he had known Dave forever), it was that Dave and quadrants were at a constant impasse. 

Dave shrugged. “Being in your head helps sort out at least some of the shit I didn’t understand about quadrants,” he said. His face shifted again, an expression crossing it that made Karkat’s insides twist, a haunted look. “I just… you know… I don’t…” 

“Yeah,” Karkat held a hand up, stopping him. “I know. Guys. Not for you.” Dave blinked and he shrugged. “Guess some shit’s been sorted out for me too. Don’t worry about it.” 

Dave flushed, hard, and Karkat felt his mind snap back to one of the simulations they’d run earlier that day, one of the more painful memories Dave had Rabbited into, the day his Bro had explained to him just exactly what it meant to be a man, and that _the most important part of it is how men feel about women, ‘Dave’. Just women, only women. You know what they do to boys who wanna get with other boys? ‘Dave’? Do you know what they do to faggots?_  

Karkat vaguely wondered what had prompted Dave to bring that up again, but the flush in his cheeks was enough of a giveaway, and the two of them silently agreed to let it go. It was a strange feeling, actually understanding what it meant to hear a human describe themselves as ‘straight’ and fear what it meant for them to not be that way, but Karkat suspected it was just as strange as it must be for Dave to hear the different terms for quadromantic behaviors and know what they meant, and what it meant if a troll didn’t know how to navigate them. 

Another thing to chalk up to the Drift, and another thing for Karkat to try to ignore as it gnawed in the pit of his digestion sac, the feelings that seemed almost to coexist in a way that he was pretty sure had to be impossible. There was vacillation, but this? 

He had no idea what this was. 

Fifteen hours before their scheduled test Drift, Karkat found himself in the mess hall. The only reason he and Dave had left the simulator at all had been at the insistence of Feferi and Jade, who needed to log some more hours themselves and pointed out that the guys needed a break. Dave went to spend some time with his twin, probably to spar and to talk, and so Karkat joined Kanaya for a meal. As they ate and made small talk, Terezi joined them, looking like she’d slept as minimally as Karkat had. 

“Honestly Terezi,” Kanaya let out a patient sigh, patting her fellow pilot’s hand. “This is going to be the death of you.” 

“Kanaya, I fight tentacle monsters for a living,” she replied, stuffing grubloaf in her mouth. “A marathon auspisticizing with my co-pilot isn’t going to be what does me in.” 

Karkat found himself feeling even more morbidly curious about Terezi and Vriska’s situation than usual, particularly in light of how all of this training with Dave was going. “Know I’m showing my hand as the ignorant newbie here, but how the fuck does that work?” he asked. 

Terezi smiled, all teeth. “I know this will come as a shock to you, but Vriska spends a lot of time going pitch for everyone around her.” 

Kanaya snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.” 

“In this particular case she was down in the science lab getting into it with Eridan,” Terezi said, sipping her drink. She had taken off her red-lensed glasses, and Karkat found himself unable to stop staring at her eyes, eerie and so red they practically glowed. “They’ve tried the spades thing before and it was a fucking disaster, so any time she starts going in that direction again it’s my job to keep the lid on that shit.” 

“How…” Karkat started asking the question before he’d fully formed it in his mind, so he took a breath and collected himself a bit before continuing. “How did it start? All the vacillating I mean?” 

Terezi shrugged, her smile shifting into something that seemed almost like fond nostalgia. “Guess it was little things,” she said, picking at her food. “We started off moirails, of course, but over time we just kept finding little ways to get on each other’s nerves. You know, I’d leave half-eaten chalk in her pockets, she’d program simulations that relied on sight for success, small shit like that. Spend so much time in someone else’s thinkpan, you start to inherently know what to do to piss them off, so one day we flipped pitch, and just kept on flipping.” 

Karkat thought about how Dave had started making it a habit of shorting him on grub sauce and commenting on the size of his horns, and made a little face. 

“Vacillation is not always that clear cut,” Kanaya added, taking a genteel bite of her noodles. She and Feferi were the only two trolls in the Shatterdome who seemed to actually like human food, and Karkat was pretty sure that was entirely due to who they Drifted with. He wondered vaguely if he’d develop a taste for those human snack foods Dave loved so much - Doritos, that was their name - and felt slightly mortified. “In my experience, any instance of co-piloting with a human results in a scenario where vacillation becomes second nature.” 

Karkat glanced at the other troll sharply, her smile polite as she glowed a little, and wondered if she knew somehow. “Yeah?” he asked, trying not to sound as interested as he was. 

“Oh yes,” Kanaya nodded. “When Rose and I first began fighting together, the sudden shifts between pale and flushed feelings were understandably uncomfortable.” 

“How’d you deal with it?” Karkat wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Between Terezi’s story and Kanaya’s admissions, he was somehow both more and less confused about his situation. 

“I remembered that humans have intimate relationships that have an inherent and expected quantity of vacillation,” she said. “While such things were considered unusual in our society, humans have their own nontraditional relationship formations that cause them equal discomfort.” 

Karkat mulled this over for a second, a little surprised. Could Kanaya’s situation with Rose really be that analogous to the way things were between him and Dave? “Human sexuality?” he asked. 

Kanaya nodded, looking surprised for half a second before smiling. “I find myself feeling unsurprised that your co-pilot would be struggling with issues similar to those Rose has gone through.” She looked him over, and Karkat felt his cheeks flush a little. “And you?” she asked. “Are you experiencing issues similar to Terezi’s and to mine?” 

“Bet he is,” Terezi smirked, putting her glasses back on. “Who wouldn’t? I never know if I wanna punch Strider in the face or pin him to a wall.” 

“HEY,” Karkat heard his voice, hard and sharp, a great deal more confrontational than he had intended. “That’s my co-pilot you’re talking about there, Terezi, jegus.” 

She rested her chin in her hand, giving him a smug look. “Yep,” she said. “You have a crush on Dave Strider. In every quadrant.” 

“Fuck off,” Karkat immediately looked down at his food, knowing he was red, blood red, and felt a little sick at himself. He’d been so good at controlling his emotions once, what had changed? “He’s my co-pilot, end of fucking story.” 

“Developing feelings for co-pilots is a perfectly natural part of the process, Karkat,” Kanaya said, and he could tell from her tone that she was smiling. “Our inclination as trolls is to anticipate and work towards a strong moirallegiance, of course, but I’ve found that the vacillation inherent in a human relationship can lead to an incredibly strong neural bridge.” Her voice softened a little and Karkat looked up to see her glow fade a little, one hand resting against the side of her face. “I will always miss Porrim, will always remember her fondly, but the connection I share with Rose…” she trailed off, and her smile returned. “It is stronger than anything I have ever felt.” 

“Yeah,” Terezi agreed, giving Karkat a friendly thump on the back, making him cough. “Drifting when I’m pale with Vris is great, but oh man, a flushed Drift is straight up devastating.” 

Karkat took another bite of his food and sighed. “Nice to know I’m not a complete mutant fuckup, I guess,” he said. 

“None of us are,” Kanaya patted him on the shoulder, a pale gesture that caught him slightly off guard. “It is easy to forget that the reason we left Alternia was that we could be free. Freedom has more than one connotation, and in this case I feel this war has allowed us to be free of all of the trappings of society that were a detriment to us. The hemocaste, the Condesce, even the quadrants, are a construct of a society we have chosen to fight. It took me many sweeps to understand what that meant, but I’ve found a certain serenity in the acceptance of it.” 

Karkat nodded, feeling a little better, at least about his side of things. “... And Dave?” he asked, knowing he didn’t need to elaborate. 

“Will also need time,” she said, taking out a tube of lipstick and reapplying a jade green layer to her lips, her meal evidently finished. “It took Rose quite a while to come to terms with her apparent defiance of the human status quo, but I understood. After I shared the Drift with her, it was almost impossible not to.” 

“Don’t worry, nubs,” Terezi cracked. “The coolkid will come to accept his burning need to fill your quadrants in due time, I just know it.” 

“Terezi I swear to fuck if you don’t shut up I will take your dragon-headed walking stick and shove it so far down your seedflap you’ll be shitting it out for a sweep,” Karkat growled. 

She flashed another mouthful of teeth at him. “Better watch out, Karkles,” she said. “The last thing you want is Vriska coming after you for flirting with me, she’s mean when she’s ashen.” 

“My hate for you is utterly platonic and knows no bounds, Pyrope,” Karkat scowled and picked up his tray. “I’m going to go train so I don’t have to listened to the flighty horseshit broad brigade.” He glanced at Kanaya, a little guilty. “No offense.” 

“None taken,” Kanaya smiled pleasantly at him. “Best of luck on your test Drift tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Karkat said, walking away from the conversation feeling at least marginally better than he had felt going into it. 

He met Dave in the sparring room and they immediately got right back to work training, and by the time the simulator was free again they managed to get through three successful drop simulations. It was a good sign, a really good sign, and even though Karkat knew his thoughts about quadrants were free and open for Dave to wander through, the fact that Dave’s thoughts on his sexuality were just as available for him to peruse made that easier to stomach. If anything, the quiet acceptance of and navigating away from those thoughts, those memories associated with them, kept them focused on Drifting, on fighting, on proving that this was something they could do.

It was still there, of course it was, but it was something the two of them could deal with later. They were united in their goal, determined to get cleared for action, and everything else would have to wait.

Karkat got his first full nights sleep in weeks the night before the second test Drift. The sopor actually served its purpose for a change, and his dreams were not only peaceful, but almost pleasant. Maybe a little too pleasant. A little too pleasant, and featuring a little too much of Dave Strider. It had been at least a sweep since he’d woken up with the desperate urge to find a bucket and some free time, but the urgent blaring come from his alarm told him there was no way he’d have the chance to do that before the test.

He was the second pilot on board _Prometheus_ that morning, and a slightly smaller (and more distant) crowd had gathered in the Shatterdome to watch. Karkat heard Dave snort as he got situated in his harness, and looked over at him with a raised eyebrow.

“I hear there’s money on how hard we fuck this up,” Dave clarified. “Lots of it.”

Karkat grunted, unsurprised. “So gets rich and who gets fucked over when we pull it off?”

Dave grinned. “When we pull this off, Spiderbreath’s gonna be so poor she’ll be wearing a garbage bag.”

Karkat grinned back. “Well fuck, now we have to make this shit take place.”

Karkat heard Sollux’s voice echo in his helmet. “Ready to get thith thitthow on the road, _Prometheuth_?”

“The only shit that we’ll be showing today is the hot stuff, Sol,” Dave said, shaking his arms out the way he always did before they went into the Drift. “Get ready for that shit to get so hot it gets dropped.”

Karkat heard Sollux sigh. “Thtrider, I want you to know that I am tho grateful it’th KK in your head and not me, becauth if I had to live in that thinkpan with you I’d have killed mythelf.”

“Ritual suicide is the first thing on my to-do list once we win this war,” Karkat said. “That or pouring some kind of bleach directly into my skull, it’s the only way he’ll ever stop.”

“Whatever nubs,” Dave smirked, Karkat didn’t even have to look over at him to know that he was smirking. “You love it.”

“ _Pilots onboard and ready to connect_ ,” Hal’s artificial voice echoed in Karkat’s ears.

“All right,” Dave said, full of nervous energy but still light-hearted. “Pimp is in the crib.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. Dave knew exactly what to say to get under his skin, and he hated how part of him thought that was amazing. “Shut the fuck up, Strider.”

He heard Sollux smother a laugh over the comm before he cleared his throat and spoke: “Inithiating neural handthake.” Hal began counting down.

Dave shook his hands out again, blowing out a breath. Karkat swore he could feel his co-pilot’s nerves radiating off of him. They didn’t say anything else, but he knew Dave knew what he was thinking. They’d been training nonstop. They were ready for this. It was going to work this time.

“ _Three. Two. One. Neural Interface Drift initiated._ ” 

Karkat let the Drift carry him into Dave’s head, pull him through the swirling amalgam of their combining memories. They had become almost as familiar as his own by now, the sights and sensations of Dave’s childhood blurring with his, and he felt everything stabilize almost instantly, the cockpit of Prometheus clear and alive around him, readouts on his screens all positive and holding. 

“ _Right hemisphere calibrated. Left hemisphere calibrated. Preparing to activate Jaeger_.” 

They brought their arms up, slow and in unison, their movements almost a graceful dance, and Karkat felt himself smile. It had been easy to try to convince himself in the sweeps he’d spent running from his past that he didn’t miss being in a Mech, could survive without the fight and the Drift and the purpose, but now that he was back, now that he was here, he couldn’t fathom how he’d ever been able to lie to himself so thoroughly. 

“Denial’s a powerful thing,” Dave muttered, and Karkat didn’t argue. 

“ _Pilot to Jaeger connection complete_.” 

The Drift was strong, stronger than it had been in the simulator, and Karkat could already feel how different this test was from the last one. He and Dave both knew what to expect from each other now, and they had strategies to keep each other stable. 

“ _Right arm’s dead and gone, my brother_.” 

Fuck. Not again. 

Almost as soon as Karkat felt the stink of blood and salt overwhelm him, he was jerked out of it again, Gamzee’s face replaced abruptly with a memory that was far more recent, the moment he’d slammed Dave into the training mat and stared breathless into his eyes. 

“Gotcha,” Dave hissed through his teeth, and even though Karkat knew his face was scarlet he was grateful. He was embarrassed, of course he was, Dave knowing that Karkat was vacillating so violently he was demolishing the very concept of quadrants wasn’t exactly a comforting thought, but it was better than reliving Gamzee’s death, better than being dragged back down to that personal hell and throwing off the alignment. At least when he was humiliated he could still stay in the Drift. If that’s what it took to keep him from Rabbiting then so be it. He and Dave would figure out how the fuck to talk about it later. 

“Holding thtrong, _Prometheuth_ ,” Sollux said. “Keep it up.” 

Karkat set his jaw and knew Dave was doing the same. He tried to resist the urge to look over at his co-pilot - they needed to focus, to keep the connection strong - but he couldn’t stop himself. There was just something about the way Dave felt in the Drift when he was ready to fight, after he had made it past all of the trauma and the pain and found what he was really fighting for, something fearless and bold and damn near straight up magical, that made it hard for Karkat not to at least steal a glance. 

As he looked over, he realized Dave was looking back at him, and somehow even through the shades Karkat could see the red of his eyes. His breath caught in his throat as their eyes met, his chest suddenly warm and tight, because in the lights of the cockpit, joined to his mind and strapped into the metal construct the two of them piloted together, Dave Strider looked almost impossibly beautiful. 

Yeah, they were gonna need to talk about that later. 

“Holy thit,” he heard Sollux say over the comm. “Now that’th a strong Drift.” 

The two of them broke eye contact, not embarrassed but returning to the task at hand, and they mindfully brought the hands of _Prometheus_ together, fist to palm, as they had done before. The connection was holding, the Drift was strong, and they were making this happen. 

Suddenly Sollux was distant on the comm, his voice muffled. “What the f- Eridan?!” 

Karkat tilted his head, confused, and beside him Dave made the same motion. He didn’t need the Drift to know they were thinking the same thing. What the fuck was happening up in LOCCENT? 

 _Prometheus_ began to power down around them, the Drift terminating and their harnesses unclipping. Karkat immediately felt rage flare up in him, hot and indignant, and the second he’d manage to extricate himself from the cockpit he was storming up to command, Dave hot on his heels. They stayed silent, both obviously fuming, and by the time they reached LOCCENT Karkat was ready to rip someone’s throat out.

“Sollux what the FUCK WAS THAT?!” Karkat yelled. “We were solid, we were holding, what the bulgesucking fuck did you terminate for?!”

Dave held an arm out, stopping Karkat from charging the communications officer down, and Karkat realized Sollux wasn’t alone. Across from him stood Dirk Strider, looking grave and furious, and Eridan Ampora, who looked frantic.

“Sorry I had to cut the test short, gentlemen,” Dirk said, his tone grim. “But we’ve had a situation arise.”

Karkat and Dave looked at each other, both suddenly nervous. “Situation?” Dave asked.

“Yeah,” Dirk replied, and Karkat could see the fear in his expression. “Roxy just Drifted with a fucking Kaiju.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy November everyone! As you can see, shit continues to hit the fan, and Dave and Karkat are slowly but surely trying to navigate this human emotion called confusion. 
> 
> Thank you so much again to everyone who leaves kudos and posts comments. I'm hitting crunch time at school right now so I don't have the time to respond to every comment, but I promise you I see them all and I appreciate them so much. Y'all are the absolute best!


	12. The Truth Will Appear

_Tell me what they say that I'm supposed to know_   
_Tell me every little detail_   
_Make truth appear for me as distant memories_   
_Like pictures on a silver screen_

_It all becomes clear_  
 _The truth will appear_  
 _Forever a debt for you and me_  
\-- From ‘Sacrimony (Angel of Afterlife)’ by Kamelot  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsnTUP6Tf4U))

__

Dave’s oldest sister was bleeding from the nose, sitting haphazardly against her desk in a chair covered in Kaiju juices. Her right foot tapped rapidly against the floor, her eyes darting around the room as she sipped a martini, which shook in her hand, rattling against her jewelry.

She looked like she’d been chewed up and spat out by a Kaiju, not just come back from Drifting with one, and Dave wasn’t sure whether he should hug Roxy or kick her ass. 

She grinned, the smile lopsided and dazed, up at Dave and Dirk. “I told you it would work,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “I fuckin’ told you.” Dave really wanted to kick her ass.

Dirk’s face was pale, his fingers fidgeting almost as violently as Roxy was shaking, but he stepped closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “You crazy broad, you made a Drift interface out of fucking garbage and used it to meld minds with a goddamned horrorterror!” 

“I found her prone on the floor still attached to the interface,” Eridan said from where he stood by his workstation, and Dave could swear the troll sounded genuinely concerned. “I unhooked her and then she vomited on my shoes, Ms. Megido helped me get her up, and didn’t know what else to do for her.” 

“It’s fine,” Dirk held up a hand to silence the scientist, refocusing his attention on his sister. “Rox, what did you see in there?” 

“Well, it wasn’t a whole brain, just a fragment, so I couldn’t get much,” she said, gesticulating wildly with her free hand, the other still shaking so it slopped vodka onto her jeans. “Just images, like, I don’t know, frames? Little flashes of shit clipping together, like when you’re at a rave and the strobe lights are going and the bass is like doonk doonk doonk-” 

She was babbling, shaking a little harder, and Dirk pulled up a chair to sit down beside her, steadying her with another gentle touch. “Roxy,” he said, leaning forward. “Rox, come on, look at me.”

Roxy sucked in a breath. Dave crossed over to her other side and took the martini glass from her, squeezing her hand, hoping it would help calm her down. “Okay,” she said, still shaky but breathing regularly. “Fuck, okay.” 

“Take your time,” Dirk said. “Tell us what you saw. Everything, I need to know the specific details down to the last doonking strobe.” 

Roxy drew in another shaky breath and she licked her lips, blood crusted under her nose. “I… I was right, there’s more to the Kaiju than running around on Earth tearing shit apart,” she said. “They’re not just here to fuck everything up, it’s part of a coordinated fucking attack, it’s all strategized.” 

“What?” Eridan sounded indignant and horrified as he ran around the edge of the desk to stand in front of Roxy. “That’s impossible, the horrorterrors are monsters, they don’t operate under strategies!” 

“It’s not impossible!” Roxy snapped, furious, her hand tugging away from Dave’s as she tried to stand up. 

“There’s just no way-” 

“Tell you what Eridan, how about you Drift with a motherfucking Kaiju and then-” 

“HEY,” Dirk held out a hand to keep Roxy from standing up and another to stop Eridan from advancing. “Shut the fuck up Eridan,” he said, turning back to his sister. “Rox, keep talking.” 

“The Kaiju, they’re not just being thrown through the Breach like wrecking balls to tear Earth apart,” she continued, shaking a little harder. “They’re directed, the attacks are timed out fucking meticulously, and they’re all designed, all controlled by Her.” 

Dave and Dirk exchanged a glance. No need to ask who Roxy meant by ‘Her’. “She can control them?” Dirk asked. 

“It’s like some kind of fucked up hivemind mind control shit,” Roxy said, giving Dave’s hand another squeeze. “The reason the samples I’ve got are genetically identical is because these monsters are grown, designed in fucking labs, and created with a hardwire right into the Condesce’s thinkpan.” 

Dave swallowed. Yeah, that sounded like the worst news. 

“So, what did you see?” Dirk pressed, though he obviously just wanted to tell Roxy to go lie down and sleep for the next sweep. 

“The reason the attacks have been getting more frequent is that She’s escalating the invasion,” Roxy said. “Sending bigger and nastier Kaiju through so we have to keep pushing ourselves, expending all our resources, so when the real invasion comes, we won’t have any defenses left!” 

“The real invasion?” Dirk’s jaw tightened, his voice hushed. 

“We’ve always known things on Alternia were bad,” Roxy said. “Shit, I didn’t have to be born there to know it’s a shitshow, but it’s gotten worse, so much worse, shrinking populations and toxic air and shit, and if the crown jewel of the empire falls, the rest is gonna just domino down the line, because who respects an Empress who can’t maintain her own home planet?” Roxy was babbling a little again but Dirk let her continue, the looks he kept shooting at Dave getting more and more concerned with every word she spoke. “She’s looking for a new base of operations, and Earth fits the bill, and then you throw in the fact that she lost half her subjects to the rebellion, yeah, she is gunning for this planet, she wants it, and she’s not going to stop until she gets it.” 

“So what’s her plan?” Dirk pressed. “Did you see it?” 

Roxy shook her head. “I know there’s something big coming,” she said, her voice a little less shaky, probably with the gravity of her words. “Something bad, but it was just flashes, just hints, nothing concrete. All I know is she wants Earth, and she’s coming for us if it’s the last thing she does.” 

Dirk stood up, hands behind his back, and he paced back and forth for a second before he took in a breath, looking at his sister. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he said. “But I need you to do it again, Rox. We need more information.” 

She stared at him in disbelief, and Dave felt his jaw drop. Was Dirk out of his fucking mind? 

“I…” she began. “I can’t do it again, the neural surge fried the brain fragment, it’s busted. Unless you’ve got a fresh Kaiju brain hidden somewhere, we’re shit outta luck, bro.” 

Dirk was silent, his expression shifting into something thoughtful, something dangerous, and Dave was pretty sure his expression mirrored Roxy’s.

“No,” Dave said, shaking his head. “You do _not_ have a fresh Kaiju brain down in a storage bay, Dirk, tell me that is not what that look means.” 

“I don’t,” Dirk said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I know where you can get one.” 

Dave’s jaw stayed dropped as he turned his attention to Dirk. “Dude, how the fuck?” 

“There are certain individuals in the city who are purveyors of Kaiju remains,” Dirk said, crossing the lab to Eridan’s console, holding out a memory stick he’d apparently produced from his pocket. Eridan moved aside to give him space as he plugged the stick in, tapping the keyboard. “Both in preserving them after the attack and exploiting them for entrepreneurial use.” 

“Sure, the black market guys,” Roxy said, standing up a little shakily and leaning on Dave to cross the room, joining the others at the console. “They come in after the scientists, get out after a couple hours once they’ve neutralized the acid in the blood and they’ve harvested everything they need.” 

“That’s right,” Dirk said, pulling up a file on the screen that displayed what Dave recognized as a digital datasheet for persons of interest. “This guy here,” he pointed at the screen, where a blurry image of a Kaiju carcass flickered, the formidable shadow of a person who was evidently a troll outlined in front of it. “He runs the entire Asian black market.” 

Roxy squinted at the blurry image, frowning. “Tall motherfucker,” she commented. “Shit, he’s like Feferi tall.” 

“They call him the Mirthful Messiah,” Dirk said, saying the name distastefully. “And there are all kinds of rumours about him. They say he was one one of the Condesce’s high subjuggulators who skipped out on the rebellion to take advantage of a more capitalistic way of life. They also say he has a cult following of surviving trolls who expect that he will lead his people into a new way of life with every washed up Kaiju body.” He rolled his eyes. Never met the guy, but he’s weird, creepy, and the best at his job.” 

“How do you know this ruffian?” Eridan asked, his expression a mask of horror. 

“Made a deal with him a couple of years ago once Interspec went independent,” he said, stepping away from the keyboard. “Getting access to Kaiju body parts before the clean-up crews arrive is practically a war zone, and we needed them for our research more than anybody. Messiah keeps his crews out until the science team’s got what they need, and the rest is exclusively his. It’s still ugly out there, but it’s probably where that brain fragment you used came from.”

“You made a deal with the head of the Asian black market?” Dave was pretty sure his jaw was going to be permanently stuck to the floor at this rate. “Jesus shit Dirk!” 

“Seriously,” Roxy nodded, looking shocked but also grateful. She and Dave exchanged a glance because they knew he had made this deal for the sake of her research, and even if it was to benefit the whole of Interspec, that kind of gesture was significant. “I’m never calling you a tightass again, bro.” 

Dirk shook his head at her, his lips curving into a fond smile, and he put a hand in the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a small card. “Last reliable intel has him working out of a shop in the Bone Slums,” he said, handing it to Roxy. “Take Aradia and Jake with you, look for that symbol. And remember, this dude took over an entire Asian crime syndicate in less than a sweep the second he set foot on shore five years ago. Don’t trust him.” 

Roxy looked down at the card and nodded, looking nervous but determined. She was still bleeding a little from the nose, but looked a lot better than she had when they’d first arrived. “Cool,” she said. She crossed the lab to grab a few things, then headed for the door, yelling. “Jakey! ‘Radia! Grab your guns, we’re going to the City!” 

Dave and Dirk exchanged glances, while Eridan sighed aggressively at his computer terminal. “She’s going to get herself killed,” the troll huffed. “I hope you realize that.” 

“She’s a Strilonde,” Dirk replied, using the affectionate portmanteau he and his siblings used to refer to their family. “She’s way too stubborn to die before she gets all the answers.” 

“I will concede that point,” Eridan grumbled, and he turned back to his console, indicating clearly that he had work to do and they needed to leave. 

Dave and Dirk left the science lab and headed for the elevator, not speaking until they were inside it and the doors were shut. Then Dirk blew out a huffing breath. 

“She Drifted with a fucking Kaiju,” he said, his voice full of disbelief. 

“Yup,” Dave agreed, nodding once. 

“Our family is completely bonkers.” 

“Yup,” Dave said again. “Shithive maggots, the lot of us.” 

Dirk’s eyebrows quirked. “You sound like Karkat.” 

Dave felt his face get hot and he fidgeted, feeling uncomfortable without a stack of files to shuffle. “Well,” he said, knowing he sounded flustered and hating it. “We’ve been training non fucking stop for two days, why wouldn’t I sound a bit like him?” 

“Okay, chill,” Dirk put his hands up, mocking surrender. “‘Methink the lady doth protest too much’.” 

“Motherfucker are you seriously gonna _Hamlet_ me in my own home?” Dave turned toward his brother, putting his hands on his hips. “Do you wanna fucking go?” 

Dirk gave him a long look, then gently placed his thumb between his teeth before gently flicking it outwards towards his brother. 

Dave’s eyes narrowed. “‘Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?’” 

“‘I do bite my thumb, sir’,” Dirk replied, taking a step back into a defensive posture. 

“‘Do you bite your thumb at _me_ , sir’?” Dave repeated, dropping into a similar stance. 

“‘No sir’,” Dirk declaimed, his tone exaggerated and with a hint of a british accent. “‘I do not bite my thumb _at_ you sir, but I bite my thumb, _sir_ ’.” 

“‘Do you quarrel, sir?’” Dave brought his fists up the way he usually did when he was sparring.

“‘Quarrel sir?’” Dirk feigned offence. “‘No sir!’”

“‘If you do sir, I am for you;” Dave knew that the elevator was approaching their floor but he was committed. When the Strider brothers got Shakespearean, that meant shit was going down. “‘I serve as good a man as you’.” 

“‘No better’,” Dirk scoffed at him. 

“Pfft, ‘well, sir.’” 

The doors of the elevator slid open and the two of them stepped out into the hallway. At the other end of it Dave caught sight of Rose standing with Kanaya and Karkat and gave his brother a look, one that said ‘you can forfeit if you dare’. 

Dirk gave him a look back and glanced briefly at the wall next to the elevator, where two old mops sat, the janitorial staff probably cleaning up after some entrails Roxy had dragged through recently. He grabbed one of the mops and then tossed the other one to Dave, which he caught deftly. It was really on now. They were entrenched in this bitch. “‘Say better!’” Dirk cried, making the others look over in surprise. “‘Here comes one of my master’s kinsman!’” 

Dave took a few shuffling steps back, holding his mop like a sword. “‘Yes’,” he said, tone snide. “‘Better, sir’.” 

“Oh bullshit,” Dirk replied, almost dropping character as he pointed his own mop at Dave, ready to parry at the first sign of Dave’s opposing thrust. “‘You lie!’” 

“‘Draw, if you be man!’” Dave said, adjusting his grip and then pointing down the hall at his twin sister. “‘Gregory! Remember thy swashing blow!’” 

“Hah!” Dirk lunged forward and Dave parried, and the two of them dueled with mops down the hallway. The janitorial staff and the engineers paused in their work to watch, clearly amused. This was not the first time Dave and Dirk had done this, though Dave had to admit it had been a long time since they’d gone full opening scene of _Romeo and Juliet_ in public.

They reached the end of the hall as they clashed, turning so Dave was able to see the expressions on his fellow pilots’ faces, and he grinned madly at Karkat, who looked more amused than shocked. Dave supposed it was hard to shock someone who’d been inside your head.

They turned and clashed again, and Dave was anticipating their little skit being brought to its inevitable conclusion by their sister. However, when a raised hand came between them, Dave was shocked to see it belonged to Karkat. The troll smirked at the two of them and said: “‘Part, fools! Put up your swords; you know not what you do!’” 

Dave stared at his co-pilot a moment, the troll’s grin lessening a little as their eyes met, before behind them he heard Rose let out a gentle sigh and say: “Welcome to the family, Karkat.” 

That sent the troll reeling away, and also made Dave suddenly feel like he really needed to be busy taking the extra mop from Dirk and putting them back against the wall. When he looked up, his siblings wore identical shit-eating grins and his co-pilot was blushing. 

“ _What_?” Dave snapped. 

“Nothing,” Rose said, her smile a picture of innocence. “I am merely considering the fact that Karkat’s access to your extensive repertoire of Shakespearean works means that between the four of us Strilondes and him and Kanaya, we could potentially put together a high quality production of any number of the Bard’s better tragedies.” 

“Uh huh,” Dave grumbled. “Sure, your machinations are solely related to theatrics.” 

“Naturally,” Rose smiled demurely. “How is Roxy?” she took Dirk by the arm and guided him away so she and Kanaya could get caught up on the events of the last hour, leaving Dave and Karkat alone in the hall. 

Dave was grateful for his shades more than ever, but for once in his life he knew that they absolutely wouldn’t help. Karkat had seen his eyes without them plenty of times in the last two days, and between that and every Drift they’re shared, he felt like he’d never have a secret again. 

He also felt like he actually didn’t mind that so much, and that feeling was somehow more frightening than any potential Kaiju he’d have to face. 

“So your sister’s alright?” Karkat asked, the two of them falling into step as they began the walk back to the mess hall. “No permanent damage?” 

“Nah, I mean her brain’s a little scrambled, but it was already halfway there from all the booze and Kaiju blood fumes,” Dave shrugged. “Dirk wants her to try it again.” 

Karkat coughed, surprised. “Fuck,” he said. “What, she didn’t die the first time so now he wants to finish the job?” 

“The info she pulled out of that Kaiju’s thinkpan is is pretty fucking groundbreaking,” Dave replied. “Like, changes everything we thought we knew about the Kaiju and what the Condesce is trying to do.” 

“Really?” Karkat sounded skeptical, anxious, maybe even a little sick. Fuck, how could Dave pick all of that up from one word? This whole Drifting thing was messing with his head so fucking hard. “The resistance tried to get that information for sweeps, nobody could ever get close enough to find out what the fuck she was planning!”

“Apparently all it took was for my batshit older sister to make a neural interface out of trash and do the mental mambo with a pickled monster brain,” Dave said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Let it never be said that the Strilondes were a boring family.”

Karkat snorted. “Anyone who says that has clearly never met a single one of you,” he said.

“Hey, you love how interesting your life has become since I came into it,” Dave replied, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Before me everything was a total snoozefest.”

“Isn’t that an old human curse?” Karkat wasn’t looking at him, but Dave could hear him smile a little. “‘May you live in interesting times’?”

“I’m pretty sure it originated solely as a way to warn people of involving themselves with the Strider-Lalonde clan,” Dave said, his tone nonchalant as he tried to ignore the part of his brain that pointed out that Karkat did not deny that he actually enjoyed Dave’s presence in his life, even just a little. “‘Beware the fearsome Strilondes, they will come into your normal little life and flip it upside down, shaking loose any vestiges of sanity and sensibility. Tremble at their approach.”

“I can confirm that as a true fucking statement,” Karkat rumbled, but Dave could still hear the humour in his voice. “But honestly?” They stopped just outside the mess hall and Dave finally looked at his co-pilot, the troll’s face actually hinting towards a smile. “After two and a half sweeps trying to build a stupid bullshit wall, running away from the real fight? I could get used to interesting.”

Dave look back at Karkat, noticing the way the corners of his mouth crinkled when he finally let himself be happy. The troll wasn’t that much taller than him, but somehow he always seemed to tower over Dave, a combination of stubborn confidence and just the sheer _alien_ quality his species possessed giving him an imposing presence, Dave found himself studying the chitinous skin and the yellow sclera that surrounded the deep red of Karkat’s eyes, the blended orange to yellow tint of his horns. 

He felt his stomach flip. Hell, he felt his stomach doing an acrobatic fucking pirouette, the kind of thing that won Olympic athletes gold medals, and in the instant that he allowed himself to think that Karkat was actually kind of beautiful, something clamped down hard, shoving those feelings away so violently Dave thought he’d been punched. In his mind he heard his Bro’s voice echoing, clear like he was standing right behind him, not dead and buried under years of memories. 

“ _You wanna be a man, stop thinkin’ about other boys, you little f-_ ” 

“No,” Dave muttered under his breath, and turned away, trying to center himself, focusing on the present and the now. He coughed, scratching the back of his head, but he knew that Karkat knew what he was reacting to. God he hated that his co-pilot could see every aspect of his fucked up broken life in excruciating detail. He hated it because it meant that he couldn’t hide it, couldn’t hide from it, couldn’t run. 

Karkat was making him own up to how fucked up he was and he couldn’t hate him for it, because he knew it was what he needed if they were ever gonna actually be pilots. 

“Listen, Karkat,” he turned back to the troll, trying to ignore the anxiety in his gut. They needed to talk about it, he knew they needed to talk about it, needed to address the feeling that was hanging over both their heads both in and out of the Drift, the way Karkat had stopped Rabbiting the second he’d thought about that moment in the training room, the way Dave kept himself focused in the Drift by holding onto the moment when he’d woken up sobbing from a nightmare and it had been Karkat who had held him, reminded him it wasn’t real. 

They needed to talk about it, and he hated it. 

“Yeah?” Karkat’s voice had an edge to it, it sounded like nerves, and Dave thought that was at least a little funny. The six and a half foot tall alien who had spent sweeps tearing Kaiju apart was anxious about talking, that was a hell of a thing. 

“We should-” Dave began, but stopped as around them the alert lights began to flash, a loud alarm suddenly pulsing throughout the entire Shatterdome. Suddenly Hal’s electronic voice echoed around them, making Dave’s entire body clench up. 

“ _Movement in the Breach. Double Event. All pilots report to LOCCENT immediately._ ” 

The two of them stared at each other, all awkwardness and nerves suddenly gone. As one they turned and took off running down the hall towards LOCCENT, both muttering swears in various languages under their breath. For a moment Dave could swear he heard Karkat say ‘fuck’ in Spanish while they were careening down the corridors. He wondered if he was ever going to actually get used to the side-effects of the Drift. 

As the approached LOCCENT Dave saw the other pilots catch up with them, Equius and Nepeta already in their suits. He and Karkat exchanged a quick glance before they were caught up in a swarm of people, engineers and technicians and other assorted officers all crowding the doors to the control room, blocking them. Dave huffed, frustrated. He was a pilot, for fuck’s sake, he needed to get to the front for the goddamned briefing whether _Prometheus_ would actually get the green light for this fight or not. 

“Get the fuck outta the way,” Karkat growled at the crowd, which parted for him biblically, red sea style, allowing them to reach the front, where Sollux stood with Dirk and Marshal Egbert, holding a tablet and managing to look serious despite his two-toned eyewear. The other pilots were already there, Rose and Kanaya having arrived just seconds before them, and they all fell silent as Sollux raised a hand and then tapped his tablet, illuminating the screen behind him. 

“The Breach wath expothed at 1100 hourth. We have two thignatureth, both of them Category Four horrorterrorth, codenameth Canker and Bela. Way they’re moving now, they’ll hit Hong Kong within the hour.” 

“Evacuate the city now,” Dirk said, pointing to John at his console. “Pass the order down, close the bridges, every civilian needs to be in a refuge asap.” 

“Sir,” John immediately started typing commands into his terminal. 

“ _Rosemary_ ,” Dirk said, after Marshal Egbert gave him a curt nod. “ _Surrender Dorothy_ , I’m sending you both out. Frontline the harbor and stay on the Miracle Mile, the last thing we need is tentacles fuckin’ up downtown Hong Kong.” 

“Sir,” Rose and Kanaya both snapped salutes, Jade and Feferi doing the same a few feet behind them. 

Dirk looked over his other pilots, his eyes resting on Dave and Karkat for a moment, before moving on. “ _Pounce_ , go out and stick to the harbor, only engage as a final option. _Law and Order_ , you’re out until your arm’s repaired, _Prometheus_ , you stay put.” 

Dave felt a weird twist in his gut. “But we’re cleared?” 

Dirk gave him a grim smile. “Cleared for all action, but for now you’re on the ground.” 

“Deputy Marshal-” Karkat began, his voice tight with frustration, but Dirk cut him off. 

“I’m sending the teams who have seen Cat Four action in the past, Ranger,” he said. “Don’t fight me on this, _Prometheus_ will have her chance, I promise.” 

Karkat fell silent, growling a little, but he calmed down when Dave looked at him, unable to keep a determined smile from his lips. They’d pulled it off. They were cleared for action. Leaning over, Dave held out his fist, and his co-pilot looked confused for maybe a fraction of a second before the corners of his mouth turned up, and he held up his own fist, tapping it against Dave’s with a gentle bump. 

As they turned to watch Sollux prepare the monitors for the attack, Dave tried not to think about how he’d wanted to do a lot more than give Karkat a fistbump, and knew they wouldn’t be able to avoid that much-needed conversation forever. 

Just until after the next Kaiju attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the halfway point of our fair story (At least in my current outline, lol), and the shit is continuing to both fly off the handle and hit the fan. Everything is covered in shit. Everything. 
> 
> This chapter also highlights one of my very favourte Strilonde headcanons, which is that their random collection of knowledge and useless information extends to an extensive theatrical repertoire, including the works of William Shakespeare. You'll have to forgive me for that, I'm an English teacher and I used to be in a Shakespeare company. 
> 
> Hope everyone's hanging in there in the wake of the Tuesday situation. I'm still kicking, and still posting chapters. Thanks again for reading, leaving kind comments, and sending kudos. You're all fantastic and I appreciate each and every one of you.


	13. I Am A Hurricane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE: This is one area where this particular AU diverges strongly from the source material. As many of you are aware, Pacific Rim is a death-heavy film. I can assure you, there are no deaths in this chapter, and any deaths that may occur (IF they occur) will be tagged appropriately as 'major character death' or 'minor character death' at the start of the chapter.

_I am the Devil's smile,_  
 _The one caught everyday_  
 _A hopeful hero's speech_  
 _Won't stop the years you bleed_  
 _I am a hurricane,_  
 _An Army strong as one_  
 _As they sit back and laugh_  
 _The one you left has just begun_  
\-- from ‘Wretched And Divine’ by Black Veil Brides  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHX2uK9Rsng))  
__

Karkat resisted the urge to pace behind Sollux’s console as the main bay doors to the Shatterdome groaned open on the screen. Watching Pounce emerge from the gate via the videofeed was majestic, sure, but being stuck in the LOCCENT control room made him feel like a complete waste of space. Dave seemed antsy too, shifting from one foot to the other as he kept his eyes fixed on the monitor, studying the readouts for all three deployed Jaegers with intense scrutiny.

They both wanted to be in _Prometheus_. They both knew they were ready for this.

Over the comms Karkat heard Equius as _Pounce_ arrived at her designated position along the coast, his voice a low rumble. “LOCCENT, _Pounce_ is approaching position and awaiting your orders.” 

Dirk leaned over the console to speak into the primary microphone. The Deputy Marshal was tense, and Karkat couldn’t blame him. There had never been a double event before, and for two Category Four horrorterrors to be headed right for downtown Hong Kong was more than enough cause for concern. “Remain on the miracle mile, _Pounce_ ,” Dirk said. “Engage at your discretion.”

“Keep your eyeth open,” Sollux added, tapping his keyboard to pull up image captures of the two horrorterrors that were swimming up from the depths of the ocean even as they spoke. “Thith ugly thucker, Canker? Biggetht Cat Four we have on record.” He clicked the image and it loaded, the sight making Karkat’s stomach churn. 

“Fuck,” Dave breathed. “It looks like a backwards baby with teeth on its ass.” 

Sollux ignored him, pulling up the image for the second horrorterror. “Bela,” he said, pursing his lips at the monster. “Lookth weird ath fuck, don’t athk me about the name, Aradia thuggethted it.” 

Karkat stared at it and felt a memory that wasn’t his shift a little in recognition at the sight of the disturbing almost humanoid quality of the creature’s posture, the baleful eyes set in the area that he supposed was its face. “It’s a reference to a human movie,” he said. “The actor who portrayed Dracula in the 1930s film was Bela Lugosi.” 

Dave nodded, glancing at him and giving him a little smirk. Clearly he loved that Karkat suddenly had all of this knowledge of human culture. Karkat couldn’t wait for his co-pilot to start talking about troll romance novels out of the blue, then the shoe would be on the other walkstub. “Sure looks like a creepy b-movie vampire,” Dave commented. “You know, if a vampire could be tall as a fucking skyscraper and have a tail.”

“Whatever,” Sollux muttered, minimizing the images so he could look at the readouts for Pounce. “They’re heavy hitterth, keep your eyeth peeled, we do not want thethe fuckerth getting to Hong Kong Thity.” 

“We read you, LOCCENT,” Equius rumbled. “Holding position.”

“ _Rosemary_ reaching target zone,” Karkat heard Kanaya’s voice over the comm, calm and smooth despite the impending high-stress situation. He had to admit, it was exciting to get the chance to see them in action up close, even if the video feed on Sollux’s monitors was grainy and distorted from pouring rain and seawater. 

“Disengaging transport,” Rose added, and Karkat watched on the monitor as the helicopters detached their running cables and the Jaeger dropped, slowly and almost gracefully, to land in the water and then rise up, waves hissing upon contact with the superheated spikes that lined _Rosemary_ ’s chassis. 

Karkat sucked in a breath, feeling that pang in his chest again as he watched Rosemary storm through the waves towards her position. He glanced at Dave and saw the expression on his face, wistful and frustrated. As if he sensed his co-pilot’s gaze, the human glanced over and Karkat gave him a nod, sympathetic. Sure, he was up in LOCCENT when he wanted to be in the fight, but he wasn’t alone, and it had been a long time since Karkat had felt anything like that. 

“ _Rosemary_ in position,” Kanaya said over the comm. “Miracle mile. Holding the coastline, beacon on.”

On the secondary monitor Karkat saw the cables on the second group of helicopters release the behemoth form of _Surrender Dorothy_. Over the comms he could hear Jade and Feferi whooping excitedly as they dropped, and he raised his eyebrows at Dave. “They always like this?” he asked. 

“Constantly,” Dave confirmed. “It’d be annoying if it weren’t so damn adorable.” 

“Are they singing the opening music from _Apocalypse Now_?” 

“Hell yeah, they’re big fans of Wagner,” Dave laughed. “It’s usually that or Queen songs. Jade loves the classics. Guess today’s a _Ride of the Valkyries_ day.” 

“ _Surrender Dorothy_ in position!” Feferi’s voice bubbled through the comm. “Miracle Mile, holding the coastline!” 

“Ten-four _Dorothy_ ,” Sollux said, hitting more buttons on his console, causing additional monitors to flicker to life. Karkat watched as the entire Hong Kong coastline appeared on the screens, a collection of radar images, grainy cameras, and infrared readouts. 

“Fuck,” he said, letting out a low whistle. “Guess you’ve gotten some upgrades since the Assault, Sol.” 

“Damn right,” Sollux said, smirking. “Interthpec outfitted me with the betht tech money could buy, and the black market did the retht.” 

Beside him Karkat saw Dave cover his ears and start humming, and he snorted. Once a requisitions officer, always a requisitions officer. “So you can see everything?” he asked. 

“Every damn thing,” Sollux confirmed, pointing at the monitors. “Exthternal imaging, satellite hackth, cockpit camerath, I have eyeth on every part of thith operation. We’ve got front row theatth for the greatetht thmackdown Earth hath to offer.” 

“We’ve got movement,” Jade’s voice echoed through the comm. “Right side, three o’clock.” 

Karkat watched the monitors, heart suddenly tight, as _Surrender Dorothy_ shifted ninety degrees to face the incoming horrorterror head on, though he knew they still didn’t have a visual. “Which one is it?” he muttered to himself, tense. “Which one?” 

Suddenly, as he watched, the massive dead-eyed form of Bela erupted out of the water, letting out a piercing shriek as it whipped around, its massive bulbous tail smashing into _Surrender Dorothy_ ’s abdomen. Karkat stared in breathless shock as the Jaeger went flying, flipping over completely and crashing down hard into deep water. 

“Fuck,” Sollux muttered, checking his readouts. As he hit keys and tapped screens, _Surrender Dorothy_ got to her feet again, drawing the massive trident from the holster on her back. 

“Culling time,” Feferi hissed over the comm, her voice vicious. Karkat still knew she wasn’t the Condesce, but it didn’t make her tone any less terrifying. As he watched, _Surrender Dorothy_ jabbed and swiped with the trident, piercing Bela’s side and dragging along its bulbous midsection. The horrorterror shrieked and flailed, grabbing at the Jaeger with its massive hands, but _Dorothy_ was ready for it, her trident back in its holster. Dodging around the monster, somehow graceful despite her bulk and plating, _Dorothy_ grabbed Bela under its armpits - at least they functioned as armpits, the creature had arms but that and the aquiline face were the only true humanoid analogues the horrorterror possessed - and squeezed. 

“Aw hell yeah,” Dave cheered, punching the air. “Suplex that fucker!” 

Bela had a strong grip on _Dorothy_ , and it did its level best to throw her off balance. The attempted suplex turned into a violent struggle, _Dorothy_ getting lifted up into the air hard, the monster’s grip crushing, sending sparks flying. 

“Shit,” Jade said over the comm, and then yelled something in a language Karkat didn’t understand, possibly an obscure Cantonese dialect. Feferi responded in the same tone, and as Karkat watched, _Dorothy_ ’s hips did a complete 180 degree rotation in midair, repositioning to prepare for impact. With another unison yell, _Dorothy_ slammed her feet back into the ground and arched up, using the momentum to fling the Kaiju hard towards _Rosemary_ , a suplex body toss times two combo that had Karkat, and the rest of LOCCENT operations, suddenly cheering. 

“Fuck yeah,” he yelled, automatically giving Dave a high five, barely even thinking about it. “Fuck that vampire piece of shit up!” He’d forgotten how thrilling it was to watch a battle on the monitors. Still nothing compared to being in a Jaeger proper, but being surrounded by other pilots (being close enough to high five his copilot) was the next best thing. 

_Rosemary_ rounded on the Kaiju, reaching up and grabbing two of the deadly sharp spines off of her chassis and brandishing them towards the beast. She swung, twisted, dodged the beast’s pummelling fists, and jammed the needles into one of its empty eyes. The horrorterror shrieked, but the attack seemed to anger it, not deter it, and it brought its tail around in a vicious swing. It connected with Rosemary’s chest, sending her flying back towards where _Pounce_ was stalking the coastline. 

Alarms blared around LOCCENT control, Sollux pressing buttons frantically and yelling into his comm in Alternian. Karkat could see that _Rosemary_ was still up, but in bad shape: engine malfunctions in the left arm’s muscle strands from the sound of Sollux’s cursing.

“LOCCENT, Rosemary is in trouble!” Karkat heard Equius call out over the comm. “We are moving in.” 

“Hold your ground, _Pounce_ ,” Dirk snapped over Sollux’s shoulder. “Do not engage.” 

“Sir, the horrorterror has incapacitated their left arm!” Equius sounded like he was barely able to hold back his rage. “If they do not retreat-” 

“Those are my orders, Ranger Zahhak,” Dirk’s voice was strained, like he obviously wanted to sound a retreat for _Rosemary_ , but knew he couldn’t risk it. “Stay on the coastline, keep your eyes peeled for Canker.” 

More alarms shrieked on Sollux’s console and Karkat jerked his eyes back over to the monitor displaying _Surrender Dorothy_ , still fighting Bela and taking heavy damage. “Fuck,” he muttered. This was going from zero to shithive in record time. 

“Reroute the auxiliary,” Sollux was yelling. “Hang in there, _Dorothy_!” 

Karkat heard Nepeta over the comm. “Purrdon my language, Equius, but FUCK THIS,” she yelled. “We’re going in.” 

“Affirmative,” Equius agreed. “Engaging Bela now.” 

“God fucking damnit,” Dirk swore, slamming his fist against a nearby desk. “There’s pear-shaped and then there’s a complete fucking trainwreck, and that’s where we are now.” He paused in his rant to look at Dave and Karkat, but he said nothing to them, turning back and speaking into his comm with a sigh. “ _Pounce_ , extract _Surrender Dorothy_ , then return to coastline, assist _Rosemary_ with defense.” 

“Afurrmative!” Nepeta trilled, and Karkat watched, his jaw dropping, as the Jaeger leapt high into the air, flying in a graceful arc directly towards the fray, claws sliding out from her arms with an audible snikt. _Pounce_ ’s trajectory didn’t bring her remotely close enough to land on top of the horrorterror, but she still advanced on it as Rosemary got back to a standing position, brandishing her wands again. The translucent rods began to glow, and as Karkat watched the wands each shot three short bursts of lasers, piercing Bela’s flesh and making it shriek, spinning away from _Surrender Dorothy_ to advance on her instead.

“Jegus,” Karkat breathed. The angle of the camera gave him a head-on view of Bela as it approached _Rosemary_ , the Jaeger still firing rounds of lasers out of her wands. There was something off about the monster when it was this close, the face now looking far less like its human actor namesake and far more macabre, more disturbing.

Then the spots that Karkat had thought were eyes suddenly twisted open, displaying a collection of glowing, pulsing tentacles. As Karkat, and the rest of LOCCENT, watched in disbelief, Bela’s false eyes suddenly spewed violent jets of fluorescent blue liquid at _Rosemary_ ’s hull. 

“Oh THIT!” Sollux leapt towards the main section of his console, alarms now shrieking around LOCCENT control. “What the fuck wath that?!” 

“LOCCENT!” Karkat heard Kanaya’s voice, strained with effort and barely-contained rage. “We’ve been hit with some type of acid!” 

“ _Rosemary_ , stand your ground!” Dirk yelled, his tone strangled. “Try to stay out of range! _Dorothy_ , _Pounce_ , get her out of there!” 

“Incoming!” Karkat heard Nepeta yell over the comms and watched as _Pounce_ leapt into the air again, claws out, and landed hard on Bela, slamming the horrorterror down into the ocean. The alarms still blared as _Rosemary_ continued to take damage from the acid, but between _Pounce_ ’s claws and _Surrender Dorothy_ ’s rapid-fire rocket bursts, it was taking a beating, the tendrils of its false eyes retracted as it focused on attacking with its bulbous tail. Karkat almost dared to let himself hope that the fight was turning in their favor, almost let out cheers again as _Pounce_ left deep cauterizing claw marks across Bela’s face. 

When the proximity alarms started shrieking again, Karkat felt his bloodpusher freeze in his chest. He had completely forgotten about Canker. He watched, helplessly, as the second Kaiju burst out of the water, spraying salt and letting out an impossibly high-pitched scream, and slammed into _Rosemary_. 

“Jeguth,” Sollux muttered. “ _Pounce_ , _Dorothy_ , both Kaiju are in range, pull out all the thtopth, get to _Rothemary_!” 

Canker really did look alien, even to Karkat. Most Kaiju varied in size and shape, but this one was particularly disturbing, its massive head squat on two legs while the rest of its body extended behind it in a rounded, tentacle-covered protrusion supported by prehensile legs. It had massive teeth, and it immediately latched on to _Rosemary_ with them, gripping the Jaeger’s arm in a crushing bite. 

“Left arm critical!” Rose called over the comm, sounding frantic. “It’s gonna bite it right off!” 

“Comin’ to you, _Rosemary_!” Feferi called, and Karkat watched as _Surrender Dorothy_ unsheathed her trident again, swinging it in a high arc and then jamming it hard into Canker’s bulbous flank. The beast shrieked, releasing _Rosemary_ from its crushing maw and rounding on _Dorothy_ , its tentacles twisting around the trident and tugging, hard. 

“ _Rosemary_ retreating to coastline,” Kanaya said. “Extensive hull damage, awaiting orders.” 

“ _Rosemary_ , hold the line,” Dirk said, his voice tight. “Do not approach the Kaiju, engage only if necessary.” 

“Ten-four,” Rose replied, but anything else she had been about to say was drowned out by the violent shriek of tearing metal, Canker’s tentacles having finally relinquished the trident from _Dorothy_ ’s grasp. _Pounce_ was occupied, activating archery mode and drawing one of its massive missile-propelled arrows on Bela, so _Dorothy_ was on her own.

“You fucker,” Jade growled over the comm. “You asked for it. Activating twister formation!” 

“Activating twister formation,” Feferi echoed, and _Dorothy_ ’s arms began to spin rapidly, churning the water around her into miniature cyclones. The water surged up, curling around Dorothy’s arms in a way that Karkat swore defied the laws of physics, and the Jaeger shot it in sharp jets towards Canker, the water boiling hot and hissing against the Kaiju’s hide. 

“Fuck,” Karkat breathed. “How does that work?” 

“Shenanigans,” Dave said, grinning, and Karkat resisted the urge to punch his co-pilot. 

Canker recoiled, shrieking. Karkat watched on the monitors as it began to back away, as if retreating, almost colliding with _Pounce_ as the Jaeger went sailing over its head, flung toward the coastline by Bela. Canker bent its body forward, tilting its grotesque head at an angle to display a curling protrusion at the top of its malformed skull. It was wider and flatter than a tentacle, and as everyone in LOCCENT watched, it began to glow and crackle, seemingly with electricity. 

“Oh thit,” Sollux breathed. 

The Kaiju’s back exploded in light, electricity shooting out of it in waves, and that was the last thing Karkat saw before all of the monitors, all of LOCCENT, shit, all of the Shatterdome, went dead. 

Dirk started yelling, Sollux swearing in Alternian as he tried desperately to revive the scrambled, lifeless systems. “Somebody get me a visual,” Dirk screamed, clearly frantic. “ _Rosemary_ , _Dorothy_ , _Pounce_ , do any of you read me?” 

“It’th no good,” Sollux banged his fist against his console. “The fucking horrorterror let out thome kind of electromagnetic pulthe! All our thythtemth are down!” 

“That’s a weapon,” Karkat heard Eridan pacing behind him, wringing his hands. He’d almost forgotten the scientist was there. “Not a defense mechanism, the horrorterrors are adapting, evolving to get around our technology.” He huffed out a breath. “Doctor Lalonde was right.” 

Karkat saw Dave smirk a little, but the familial victory was short-lived, everybody in LOCCENT basically panicking while Dirk barked orders into a shortwave radio at chopper pilots. 

“Sollux, get me a goddamned ETA,” Dirk snapped at the troll, who was now digging through a nest of wires under his console. “All three deployed Jaegers are dead in the fucking water right now, the Kaiju are gonna head straight for the coast.” 

“It’th gonna take two hourth jutht to reroute the auxthiliary power,” Sollux yelled, tugging at a tangle of cords desperately. “We’re fucked, everything’th running digital in the Jaegerth, _Rothemary_ , _Dorothy_ , _Pounthe_ , they’re all digital.” 

Karkat felt his bloodpusher suddenly jerk up in a desperate leap. Holy shit, if _Prometheus_ was made of the salvaged remains of _Miracle_... He looked over at Dave and could see that his co-pilot was thinking the same thing, his jaw set. He looked at Karkat and gave him a nod. He was on board. 

“Sir,” Karkat said, stepping forward. “They aren’t all digital.” 

“What?” Dirk was clearly distracted, listening to the reports of the helicopter pilots over the shortwave. 

“ _Prometheus_ ,” Karkat explained. “If she was constructed using pieces of _Miracle_ then she was never converted to digital, right?” He directed his question to Dave, who nodded.

“True story,” he confirmed. “ _Prometheus_ still runs analog, she’s all nuclear.” 

Dirk pressed his lips together, glancing between Karkat and Dave as he weighed his options. This didn’t take long, since the options were essentially to send the analog Jaeger or lose sixty percent of his pilots, along with most of downtown Hong Kong. 

He sighed. “Go.” 

Karkat almost didn’t believe it was happening, almost thought he was hallucinating, but a glance toward Dave told him that this was real and definitely taking place. The two of them immediately took off running towards the docking bay, and over his shoulder Karkat could hear Dirk speaking into his radio. “ _Prometheus_ cleared for action, have choppers standing by for drop.” 

Karkat and Dave suited up in silence, the technicians working as fast as they could to get them ready. They all knew time was of the essence here, every second they wasted was a second they could potentially lose a Ranger or worse, lose civilians. They ran for the conn pod once they both had their helmets tucked under their arms, clunky but sure of their footing, and as they clipped into their harnesses in the cockpit, Karkat could feel the familiar rush of emotions and adrenaline he always used to get right before a drop. Excitement, nerves, a righteous fury that always seemed to help him remember what it was he was fighting for. 

He looked at Dave as his co-pilot strapped on his helmet, his face flushed under his shades and lit by the neural relay gel coursing through his suit. Karkat was struck, once again, by how fragile humans were, and how that actually made the species both horribly suited and absolutely perfect for being pilots in this interdimensional war. 

Somehow, people were always willing to fight the hardest when they had everything at stake, fragility be damned. Karkat understood that better than most. 

Dave noticed him looking and his cheeks got a little more pink before he gave Karkat his characteristic lopsided smile. “Ready for this?” 

Karkat gave him a smile, one that showed teeth. “Bet your ass.” 

“ _Initiating neural handshake_ ,” Hal said, his voice echoing around the cockpit, and Karkat took in a breath, ready for the now-familiar barrage of memories merging together. 

“ _Neural interface drift initiated_.” 

Karkat felt the Drift take him over, washing over him in waves of memories of his lusus, of Dave’s parents, of their hours of nonstop training and of feelings they both had but weren’t ready to admit out loud. When he came back to the cockpit, he felt stable, knew Dave felt stable, and as one they gave an affirmative thumbs up. 

“Let’s make shit take place,” Dave said, and Karkat was only a little exasperated by his co-pilot’s insistence on memes. 

“Bela heading for coathtline,” Karkat heard Sollux over his comm. He’d managed to get the analog systems back online, and Karkat was almost glad for the nasal lisping voice assaulting his aural cavity. He was sure that in five minutes he’d be swearing at the LOCCENT officer just like old times, but for a brief moment, he could be nostalgic. 

As _Prometheus_ rolled towards the massive bay doors, Karkat checked all of the weapons and equipment, running a quick mental assessment of all their options. This didn’t take long, as the Drift supplied him with a detailed inventory. He glanced over at Dave, who was smirking, and rolled his eyes. Of course Dave knew the full weapons inventory, he’d practically built _Prometheus_ with his own two hands. Would his co-pilot ever stop being a smug douche? 

More importantly, would he ever stop finding it so fucking attractive? 

As if he could actually read Karkat’s mind, Dave’s cheeks heated up again, and Karkat resisted the urge to kick himself. Jegus dicks, Vantas, you’re in a gargantuan mech about to go murder the shit out of an unholy horrorterror and you’re thinking about your hot co-pilot? Shit on a stick he was going to hell.

Then again, it wasn’t like he was the only one in this Drift with those thoughts swirling around. 

“ _Prometheuth_ ,” Sollux’s voice over the comm snapped Karkat back to the task at hand as the choppers secured their lines and began to take off, the Jaeger rising into the air slowly. “Canker ith blocking the path to Hong Kong, take the fucker out and then head for Bela.” 

“Ten-four, LOCCENT,” Karkat said, shaking his arms out automatically before realizing that he and Dave had done it in unison, his co-pilot’s nervous tic already subsumed into his pre-battle ritual. Again, something that wasn’t actually that weird for co-pilots to do, but somehow the fact that it was Dave made it more significant, more symbolic. Karkat had never been in a Drift like this, not even during the simulations. This was the real deal, and it was like they had both finally realized that, and he could feel how strong that mental connection was, like they really were one mind, one heartbeat, one singular determined purpose. 

Proximity alarms began blaring on the monitors and Dave and Karkat both watched as their choppers approached the massive form of Canker as it made its way towards Hong Kong. The still form of _Pounce_ was displayed on the radar directly in front of the monster, slight movement coming from the top of the Jaeger’s helmet, and Karkat squinted at the infrared readout, confused. 

“LOCCENT we’ve got movement on _Pounce_ ,” he said. “Two heat signatures, small.” 

“The fuck?” Sollux sounded concerned, and Karkat heard swearing and crashing as the LOCCENT officer began applying percussive maintenance to one of his monitors. “Thtill no vithual, _Prometheuth_ , tell uth when you have eyeth on.”

“Roger,” Dave said, hitting some buttons on the console to magnify the image. As Karkat watched, the infrared picture zoomed in, detecting two distinctly troll lifeforms standing on _Pounce_ ’s helmet. “Holy fuck, is that…?” 

Dave didn’t need to finish his sentence because Karkat could see it too, the sudden bursts of heat that arced across the infrared map to hit Canker right in one of its grotesque eyes. 

Karkat felt his jaw drop. “... Did Equius and Nepeta just shoot a goddamned horrorterror with fucking flare guns?” 

“Tryin’ to buy us some time,” Dave said, agreeing. “Remind me to get them a real fuckin’ nice Christmas present.” 

Karkat noticed that Dave’s accent seemed more pronounced, possibly due to adrenalin and nerves. He kind of liked it, the way he seemed to slur his vowels and how the ends of words lost their hardness. He coughed, back to the monitors, focused. “Looks like they just pissed it off,” he said. “We gotta get the fuck down there.” 

The were in position. Dave hit controls on the console again. “Disengaging transport,” he said, and Karkat felt his stomach fly up into his throat as _Prometheus_ plummeted down to the ocean below. Canker had stopped advancing on _Pounce_ , thank fuck, and it rounded on them as they hit the ground, water spraying up in fountains in their wake. The Kaiju’s weirdly proportioned body was even more disturbing up close, the viewports and readouts all confirming its entire front half as being composed of a wide mouth full of tentacles and teeth. It lurched toward them, letting out a high-pitched shriek. 

“Here we go,” Karkat said as he and Dave both shifted as one, bracing themselves for the monster’s impact, arms up ready for a grab. “This is the real shit.” 

“The realest,” Dave agreed. He was calm, solid, still, ready to become the storm. Karkat could feel it and could feel them both find their center, the silence of the Drift filling them, and his face split into a wide grin. 

This was what he lived for. This was home. 

Canker charged at them, surprisingly fast for its backwards-looking shape, and it reared up to swipe at _Prometheus_ with its stumpy arms. Dave and Karkat dodged around it, ducking under the limbs and then grabbing at the glowing protrusion on the Kaiju’s back, fingers digging into the meat of the flesh and pulling. Whatever this thing was, it had caused the electronics failure, and if they were going to have any hope of surviving, they needed it gone. 

Karkat grunted, gritting his teeth, and Dave did the same, the fleshy bioweapon dripping with horrorterror blood, but their grip was strong, and with a last grunt and a violent shriek from Canker, they tore off the piece of flesh and flung it out into the depths of the ocean. 

“Nice work, _Prometheus_ ,” Karkat heard Dirk over the comm and he felt his own heart swell with pride on Dave’s behalf. “Take it down!” 

Canker rounded on them again, another shriek erupting from its jaws, and its back tentacles reared up, wrapping around _Prometheus_ ’s waist. Dave and Karkat jerked to the side in the cockpit as the Kaiju lifted them into the air and spun once, then twice, getting enough momentum to release and send them flying up over the remaining expanse of the ocean towards Hong Kong City. 

Alarms echoed in Karkat’s ears as they flew over buildings and roads covered in abandoned cars, still spinning from the Kaiju’s throw. _Prometheus_ crashed hard into an overpass, skidding along a stretch of highway, but they managed to turn the crash into a roll, tucking under and coming out of it in a low crouch, back on their feet and ready to engage with Canker again. Metal shrieked around them as the Jaeger’s plating made contact with huge storage containers, sparks flying around the shipyard where they had landed. 

“Sweet landing,” Dave commented, and Karkat snorted. Canker had reached the shoreline and was stepping on the oblong containers and their trucks like they were made of toothpicks, crushing them under its claws. Karkat felt his co-pilot glance over at him and he met his gaze, their expressions mirrors as they locked gazes. 

“Run him down?” Karkat asked, knowing the answer. 

“Fuck him up,” Dave replied, and as one they turned back to the monitors, watching as the Kaiju started another charge towards them, shrieking once again. They took a few steps forward, then broke into a flat sprint, _Prometheus_ leaving massive holes in the ground wherever she stepped. 

The proximity alarms blared again, and they waited until just the right moment, until they had closed just enough distance, and as Canker roared at them again they leapt off the ground, bringing their left arm up with the hand clenched in a fist. _Prometheus_ came down hard, the monster’s jaw hitting the ground with the force of the Jaeger’s punch to the top of its head. 

“Get dunked on!” Dave yelled, and he and Karkat planted the left hand of their Jaeger on Canker’s face, punching the beast again and again with their free arm. 

They needed more force. Karkat checked the inventory and brought his right arm back, Dave moving with him. “Elbow rocket!” Karkat yelled, the virtual lights glittering around his and Dave’s fists in the cockpit. “Engage!” 

“ _Engaging elbow rocket_ ,” Hal’s robotic voice echoed and Karkat felt the hyperpowered weaponry charge up in the elbow of the right arm. Swinging forward hard, they jammed their fist into the Kaiju’s face, the impact knocking it backwards and hard into the main section of the shipyard. 

Canker shrieked again, its tentacles shooting out to wrap around a massive supply crane, which it wrenched off of its stand and swung it around to bring it crashing down on _Prometheus_ ’s helmet. Another sharp blow from Canker’s stumpy arm cracked across the Jaeger’s plating, sending her sharply to the side, Karkat and Dave both groaning at the impact. 

Thinking fast, they both reached down, grasping two handfuls of the massive storage containers that were stacked all around the construction site. Metal squealed and shrieked in their grip as they brought their arms up and swung at Canker’s face, bringing the containers smashing into the Kaiju’s distorted mouth, causing massive teeth and strings of spit to fly everywhere. As Canker dropped down to its right, _Prometheus_ brought her arms up and lined up the impact so the containers could crush into the Kaiju’s face upon contact. The sick sound of metal crunching into flesh mixed with a strangled scream from the monster, and it was followed by a louder shriek as _Prometheus_ smacked her fist into the side of its face again, knocking it down into a pile of shipping crates. 

Canker was in bad shape now, but refusing to back down, its tentacles attempting to whip up and latch onto _Prometheus_. It was unable to get a grip, however, because Dave and Karkat had grabbed it from behind, bringing the Jaeger’s arms up under what technically qualified as the beast’s armpits. It reared back, struggling as it tried to break free of the Jaeger’s grip, but they held on tight, Dave and Karkat both growling with exertion as they lifted the Kaiju into the air as high as they could. 

“Eat shit,” Karkat hissed through his teeth, and he and Dave dropped _Prometheus_ back into a controlled fall, suplexing Canker hard onto the concrete ground of the shipyard. 

“Holy fuck,” Sollux breathed through the comm, and they could hear the other people in LOCCENT echoing his sentiment. 

Canker was up again almost as fast as _Prometheus_ had been, dazed but furious, and it charged into the Jaeger with another shriek, pushing her backwards towards the harbor. Struggling against the monster’s bulk and momentum, Karkat grunted, and he and Dave brought the right arm around. It was time to pull out all the stops. 

“Plasma cannon!” Karkat yelled. 

“ _Plasma cannon, engaged_ ,” Hal intoned over the comm, and Dave and Karkat brought their right arm back as the weapon charged and jerked back with recoil as the weapon shot once, twice, three times directly through the Kaiju’s abdomen. 

“Empty the clip!” Karkat’s voice was high and panicked, full of adrenalin because Canker wasn’t slowing down, its intent clearly still to shove _Prometheus_ off the end of the dock and back into the water. “Empty the fucking clip!” 

They fired round after round into Canker, shots hitting the Kaiju’s underbelly and arms repeatedly until its left arm was torn in half by the force of the plasma bolts. It shrieked, the limb flying across the shipyard and skidding across the slick concrete, and lost its momentum, _Prometheus_ stopping inches from the water. 

“GET REKT,” Dave yelled as they shoved, hard, sending Canker into the nearby overpass with a loud crash. The Kaiju struggled, blood spilling and pooling across the ground, and _Prometheus_ fired plasma rounds into its chest cavity until it stopped moving, its shrieks dying in its mouth and turning into gruesome gurgles.

They stood over the massive corpse, mangled and spattered across the shipyard, and the plasma cannon powered down slowly, Dave and Karkat both breathing heavily. They could hardly believe it. _Prometheus_ had just got her first kill. 

They began to walk away, heading towards downtown Hong Kong, but Karkat had a thought that brought them to a stop. “Wait,” he said, flashing Dave a grin. “What’s the first rule of fighting monsters?” 

Dave looked back at him, and responded with his own grin. “Double tap,” he said. “Make sure it’s dead.” 

Karkat set his jaw and his smile widened. “Don’t turn your back on the body.” 

As one they charged up the other plasma cannon, and gore and bone fragments erupted from the carcass as they emptied another clip directly into Canker’s bloody remains. 

Steam rose from the corpse. They powered down the cannon and exchanged another look. Even with his shades on, Karkat could see Dave’s eyes shining, and he didn’t need the Drift to know that his co-pilot felt more alive than he ever had in his existence. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. 

Karkat smirked, not even embarrassed about his train of thought at this point. “Fucker’s so dead I think the Condesce herself fucking felt it.” He set his jaw, all of his drive renewed. “Let’s go.” 

They turned, leaving the body behind and piloting _Prometheus_ towards downtown Hong Kong and their second target. The job was half done, and they were ready to finish it.

Now they just had to get to Bela.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit is really taking place now! Kaiju are getting wrecked, Dave and Karkat are kicking ass, hell yes!
> 
> A warning up front, there won't be an update next week because it's Thanksgiving here in the US and I have a literal mountain of term papers to write and student papers to grade. However, rest assured that there will be a new chapter the week after. 
> 
> Thanks again to everyone for reading and leaving comments and kudos. I appreciate all the feedback and encouragement.


	14. What Stays And What Fades Away

_Through the crowd, I was crying out_   
_And in your place there were a thousand other faces_   
_I was disappearing in plain sight_   
_Heaven help me, I need to make it right_

_You want a revelation,_  
 _You wanna get it right_  
 _But it's a conversation,_  
 _I just can't have tonight_  
 _You want a revelation_  
 _Some kind of resolution_  
 _You want a revelation_  
\-- From ‘No Light, No Light’ by Florence and the Machine  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATfUdaZQLMA))  
__

Dave could hear everyone in LOCCENT control cheering through his comm as he and Karkat walked away from what was left of Canker. He registered it as background noise, glad they were getting recognition for their work, but also remaining focused. It was easy to stay in the moment now, momentum and adrenaline fueling his movements, his actions precise and determined entirely by the flow of his and Karkat’s minds connected in the Drift. 

“LOCCENT, _Prometheus_ heading for downtown Hong Kong, approaching Bela’s location,” Karkat said, tapping his console as they walked the Jaeger forward, abandoned cars and paved roads getting crushed under their feet. They hugged the coastline, staying along the harbor to avoid the more populated areas, paying close attention to their proximity readouts. 

“ _Prometheuth_ , Bela ith moving inland, current locathion, the Bone Thlumth,” Sollux said. “Interthept and terminate with exthtreme prejudithe.” 

“Copy that,” Karkat said, pressing another button, zooming the proximity readout in on the heat signature of the Kaiju, which appeared to be tearing a massive hole in the street. “Looks like we need to get its attention.” 

Dave looked out the viewports at the rows of creaking, damaged ships that lined the harbor, and had an idea. He didn’t need to speak it aloud, that was the beauty of the Drift, and all it took was the smallest of nods from Karkat for Dave to know that he was on board. 

Dave hadn’t expected _Prometheus_ to feel so much like a home he’d been searching for his whole life, hadn’t expected Karkat to feel so thoroughly like an extension of his own self. Now that he was in the cockpit of this Jaeger, his Jaeger, fighting alongside his co-pilot to save the world, he never wanted to leave. 

They bent down slowly, massive fingers wrapping around the end of a long barge lying askew against the nearest dock. Dragging it behind them, Dave and Karkat made their way towards downtown and the hulking figure of Bela, slow but purposeful, ready to take the horrorterror down. 

They entered the wreckage of the city, buildings still lit and ghostly in the haze of the pouring rain. As they approached the Kaiju, it let out a shriek and turned, staring down _Prometheus_ with its blank false eyes. Abandoning the hole it had torn in the street, Bela rounded on them, its tail swinging between skyscrapers and its mouth open in an unsettling grin. 

Dave and Karkat hit buttons on their consoles as one, and Hal’s voice echoed through the cockpit. “ _Torque engaged_.” They steadied themselves, and then swung the massive barge around, as if it were a club, and held it overhead before bringing it down directly onto Bela’s face with a sick thump, swinging again and again, driving the beast back. 

Bela shrieked, its tail lashing up and grabbing at the barge, wrenching it from _Prometheus_ ’s grasp and flinging it down a side-street, where it came to a stop jammed between two buildings. The Kaiju shrieked again and whipped its tail directly at the Jaeger’s abdomen. Dave and Karkat grunted as _Prometheus_ was knocked back, sprawling on the street surrounded by abandoned cars and broken paving stones. 

“Ow,” Dave mumbled, the two of them shifting in unison to get _Prometheus_ back up on her feet. “Think we got its attention?” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Karkat grumbled, though it was more an automatic response than anything malicious. Dave was getting better at telling the genuine curses and the affectionate responses apart. 

By the time they had stood up, Bela had retreated, rounding a corner to move deeper into the bowels of the city. Dave hear Karkat swear and felt it on his own lips, both of them breaking into a run to catch up with the Kaiju. By the time they reached the corner, it was gone, vanished among the forest of skyscrapers. 

“Fuck,” Karkat muttered, checking the infrareds. “Where the fuck did it go?” 

“ _Prometheus_ , do you have Bela’s location?” Dirk barked over the comm. 

“Keep your shades on, Bro,” Dave said, smiling grimly. “We’re just playin’ a little Greek mythology game here, no biggie.” 

“Playing a what?” Sollux sounded exasperated. 

“Theseus and the Minotaur,” Karkat clarified. “This city is a fucking maze.” 

“Labyrinth,” Dave corrected. “The minotaur wasn’t in a maze.” 

“Shut the fuck up, Strider,” Karkat growled. “I know that.” 

“Because I know that?” he was smirking now.

“No, because I did my research when I lived on this planet for two and a half sweeps, you smug shitsniffer, jegus dicks.” 

“Okay, okay,” Dave laughed. “You’re a pinnacle of human culture, now let’s hunt this piece of shit vampire knockoff down.” 

Dave still couldn’t explain why needling Karkat was so much fun, even in the heat of battle. Possibly because he knew Karkat liked it. A part of his brain that was definitely not his pointed out that this behavior absolutely qualified as flirting, and a much larger part that was definitely his was having trouble giving a shit. 

He huffed out a breath. _Okay Dave. Freak out about your sexuality later. Save Hong Kong now_. 

The glass and metal structures glowed eerily in the reflected rain and the flashing brightness of _Prometheu_ s’s searchlights. Karkat was growling under his breath as he looked at the useless readouts on their screens, frustrated. 

“Still can’t pinpoint this fucker,” he grumbled. “It’s fast as shit, keep your eyes open.” 

Dave refocused his efforts, their heads moving back and forth in unison as they searched for the Kaiju between the buildings. 

“Choppers,” Karkat barked into the comm. “Do you have a visual on Bela, over?” There was no response, and Karkat cursed under his breath a few times, the two of them continuing to guide _Prometheus_ down the labyrinthine path of illuminated city structures. Eerie silence greeted them, the rain spattering against the Jaeger’s helmet. 

“Come out, come out,” Dave muttered, fists still at the ready. “Not playin’ games here, Mister Lugosi. Show us your face.” 

As if on cue, the proximity alarm blared to life, and before they could react, Bela leapt out of the massive glass skyscraper directly to their right, screaming as it slammed into them hard. 

“Found him,” Dave groaned as they shoved the Kaiju off of them, sending it back and then directly into the building with a quick uppercut, and then another, the third missing and sending _Prometheus_ crunching into the glass of the decimated building, arm grinding and tearing through what remained of the offices within. By the time Dave and Karkat extricated their right arm from the wreckage, Bela had grabbed them with its tail again, lifting them up and smashing them hard into another skyscraper, and as they struggled to get their footing, the Kaiju pushed and shoved them directly through the building, sparks flying as metal cascaded down around them. 

“Fuck!” Dave and Karkat swore in unison as they went tumbling out through the other side of the building, flipping over and landing on their knees. As they got to their feet, both of them groaning, Dave saw Bela’s gruesome false eyes flicker open, tentacles curling and lighting up electric blue. 

“Shit!” They dodged hard to the right, slamming into one of the buildings as the Kaiju spewed a stream of acid out of its eye-holes, missing them by inches and melting the metal support beams of a neon illuminated skyscraper. Watching the remains drip down, Dave and Karkat both had a thought at the same time. They needed to stop this fucker from doing that again. 

Turning with a hard swing of the right fist, _Prometheus_ jammed its hand into Bela’s face, fingers interlocking with the creature’s skull and digging into the false eyes, the tentacles within squelching and leaking with disgusting fluid. Bela shrieked, squirming under their grasp, and its tail swung around again, wrapping around Prometheus’s left arm. As it got a solid grip on the Jaeger’s limb, it flexed its tail hard and began pulling, trying to rip it out of its socket. 

“Shit,” Dave muttered, alarms screaming in his ears and lighting up the console like it was decorated for Christmas. They could feel their grip slipping on Bela’s face, the blood making its skull slick as it attempted to dig its teeth into the Jaeger’s hand. 

Karkat let out another low growl, gritting his teeth. “I’ll hold it,” he managed. “Vent the coolant on the left flank!” 

Dave lunged forward, hitting buttons on his console, and Hal’s voice echoed around the cockpit once again. “ _Coolant venting_.” 

They could feel the tail slowly freezing up around their arm, Bela screaming and struggling under the sudden rush of coolant cascading over its tail combined with the crushing grip of _Prometheus_ ’s right hand on its face. In moments it was solid and blocky, and all it took was a sharp jerk and a twist for them to free their left arm, the Kaiju’s tail shattering around it. 

“If you say ‘freeze’ or make any other ice-based pun I will fucking murder you,” Karkat growled, but Dave could hear the smile in his voice even over the horroterror’s agonized shrieks. 

“I won’t if you don’t say ‘lights out’ when you rip off those eyestalks,” he replied, smirking in grim satisfaction as they pulled their right hand back, hard, ripping out Bela’s acid-spitting tentacles and leaving the false eyes bloody holes in the monster’s face. 

Bela reeled back, still shrieking in agony, but it rounded on them again, grabbing _Prometheus_ by the waist with its legs and gripping so tight the cockpit alarms tripped again, the creature’s claws crushing muscle strands and sending out hot sparks. Dave vaguely thought this was strange as the creature leaned over them, bracing its arms on the ground. What was it going to do, bear hug them? 

With a deafening screech, Bela reared up and shook violently from side to side, and as Dave and Karkat watched, both of them staring with their mouths agape in shock, the flaps of skin that had hung so deceptively across its back suddenly unfurled, revealing them to be a wide pair of leathery wings. 

“Oh…” Karkat began, their heads jerking forward as Bela gave its wings an experimental flap, shaking _Prometheus_ violently in its grip. 

“... _Fuck_.” Dave finished the thought as they were jerked around again and then suddenly airborne, the massive horrorterror flapping its wings once, twice, three times as it carried them up high past the tops of the skyscrapers, _Prometheus_ dangling from its claws like bait on a hook. Bela flew shakily, almost like it was trying to get its bearings, but its purpose became clear as it slammed the Jaeger into the rooftop of one of the buildings, jamming her down and then dragging her across the broken glass and metal. Dave felt his head spin and his stomach churn as Bela slammed them down against the tops of the skyscrapers, over and over again, until they felt their world tilt sharply as the Kaiju flapped up higher and higher, passing through the stormclouds and heading for the stratosphere. 

“Holy fuck, holy fuck,” Dave heard himself mumbling the words over and over again as he and Karkat attempted to break free of the Kaiju’s grip. They kept grabbing at any part of Bela they could reach, struggling, but the monster’s grip was firm as its wings kept flapping, as it climbed higher and higher up into the sky. 

“ _Atmosphere loss in progress_ ,” Hal said, new frantic alarms shrieking around the cockpit, the exterior pressure causing relays behind them to crackle with electricity, pipes beneath them to erupt in steam. 

“Fuck,” Karkat growled. “Temperature’s dropping, AND we’re losing oxygen, plasma cannons are empty. We’re fucked, Dave, we’re absolutely fucked.” 

Dave shook his head. “Not yet we aren’t,” he said, leaning forward to hit the console with a hand. The image on the screen flashed briefly, and as Dave looked over Karkat’s face split into an almost manic grin. 

“Oh,” the troll breathed. “Hell fucking yes.” 

Dave smacked the button with the palm of his hand, then flicked a lever directly beneath it. Hal’s voice echoed through the cockpit once again: “ _Deploying melee weaponry. Sword and Sickle, activated_.” 

Dave and Karkat brought their left arm around in a swooping arc as the sword deployed, swinging through the air and locking into place with a flash, the blade reflected in the sunlight. A massive curved metal sickle slid out of their right arm, point wickedly sharp, and as one they swung with it, the blade swooping through the rapidly thinning air. Bela let out a high squeal as they embedded the sickle hard in the Kaiju’s chest, lodging it there so they could take aim. 

As they swung the sword around, aiming for Bela’s throat, Dave felt something swell in his chest, a confidence and purpose so firm, so solid, something undoubtable and knowable that he had never experienced before. In the Drift he caught flashes of his parents’ faces, tear-stained but firm in the face of danger, remembered the way his father’s sword felt in his hands when Dirk gave it to him, the relief of knowing that his oldest brother couldn’t hurt them any more. 

This was his birthright. This was his freedom. 

“Get fucked,” Dave said, his eyes flashing, and they brought the sword down hard into Bela’s neck, slicing across until they had bisected the Kaiju right across its chest. 

The two halves of Bela fell away on either side of them, burning through the atmosphere as _Prometheus_ , finally free of the Kaiju, began to fall. Dave felt the sword and the sickle both retract as Hal’s voice echoed around the cockpit once again. “ _Altitude actuation off balance. Fifty thousand feet to ground contact_.” 

“Fuck,” Karkat’s teeth were clenched, his entire body taut, and Dave knew his was the same. They were freefalling through the atmosphere, hull around them red-hot from re-entry, and picking up speed. 

“ _Altitude loss critical_ ,” Hal said. “ _Forty thousand feet_.” 

“ _Prometheus_!” Dave suddenly heard Dirk’s voice over the comm, yelling as loud as he could so he could be heard through all of the shrieking alarms. “Loosen all the shock absorbers, use your gyroscope as balance and ball up! It’s your only chance!” 

“ _Twenty thousand feet_ ,” Hal said. Dave and Karkat were hard at work in the cockpit, loosening everything, preparing for this absolutely insane move that was probably not going to save them from being pancaked on the ground any second now. 

“Shit,” Karkat was thinking what he was thinking - of course he was - that this wasn’t going to be enough. As they both frantically mashed buttons and flicked switches, Dave felt the proverbial lightbulb go on in Karkat’s mind as he reached out, hit the massive red button above the console, yelling “FUEL PURGE, NOW!” 

The sudden purging of all their fuel sent them rocketing back upwards, offsetting some of the momentum but not enough, and as they began to drop again Dave could see the lights of Hong Kong rushing up to greet them. 

“ _Impact alert_ ,” Hal said. 

“Shit, still coming in too fast!” Karkat groaned, speaking despite the two of them being jammed hard into their harnesses, faces practically rippling with the g-force. “We’re coming in too fucking fast, brace for it Dave!” 

Dave braced himself, bracing _Prometheus_ in turn, and they landed with a bone-shaking crash that sent a cloud of dust and rubble flying all around them. Everything spun for a moment, as if his brain was being bounced like a ball, and Dave leaned forward in the harness, gasping as he tried to catch his breath. Slowly, carefully, they got up, concrete dust and wiring sliding off of _Prometheus_ ’s hull as they rose up to get to a standing position. 

Dave could hear riotous cheering over the comm, his brother and his friends all whooping and shrieking congratulations in dozens of languages. He still felt a little light-headed, a little woozy, but as he leaned forward to brace himself against the console he felt a hand cover his, holding it gently. It felt like an anchor, a vestige of reality keeping him steady, and he turned to look at Karkat, who was just as breathless and disoriented as he was. 

“Dave,” the troll said, his voice hoarse. “Fuck, that was… are you okay?” 

Dave drew in a shaky breath, his face suddenly heating up as he really registered his co-pilot’s touch. His hand was warm, comfortable, real, and he found himself thinking that he really didn’t want Karkat to let go. “Never better,” he said, his voice higher than normal, exhaustion in his tone. “Pretty sure I could go punch out Cthulhu right about now. Oh wait,” his grin threatened to split his face in half. “Guess we already did that.” 

Karkat stared at him for a moment, then leaned forward, starting to laugh. Dave joined him, their laughter echoing around the cockpit, and as they got their bearings and began the walk towards the rendezvous point with the choppers, Dave felt a twinge of something in his chest when Karkat finally released his hand to hit buttons on the console. Something like wishing he hadn’t let go. 

It took him until the choppers had lowered _Prometheus_ back into the Shatterdome to fully regain his bearings. Once they were docked and able to unclip from their harnesses, Dave pulled off his helmet, shaking out his hair and adjusting his glasses. Beside him Karkat handed his own helmet to one of the technicians that had crowded the cockpit, all of them cheering and offering encouraging slaps on the back to the two pilots. John was waiting by the door out to the main bay, and he gave Dave a thumbs up, face split in a massive grin. 

They were escorted down the hall by an increasing number of engineers and other Shatterdome personnel, all of them cheering and congratulating them on their victory. By the time Dave and Karkat had reached the atrium, they were being crowded by a veritable army, and Dave felt his heart leap as he saw Rose standing with Kanaya next to the elevator, beyond grateful that his sister was alive and that he had helped take down the Kaiju that had threatened to destroy her. 

She stepped forward through the crowd, pulling him into a tight hug. “Well done,” she whispered. “You were fantastic.” 

“Dave!” Suddenly Nepeta had descended upon him, nearly crushing him in a hug. “You were amazing! Furr-ocious! Purrfection!” 

Equius clapped him on the shoulder, almost making Dave’s knees give out at the force of it. “Truly,” he said, his voice gruff but friendly. “The two of you are formidable in battle.” 

“I expected nothing less,” Terezi was there now, her arms around Karkat in an obnoxious hug, making him squirm. “Props to the _Prometheus_ powerhouse!” 

Dave could see Vriska on the edge of the crowd, and even she had a begrudging impressed expression on his face. He couldn’t stop smiling, holy shit this was the best feeling he’d ever had in his life. 

Then he turned to look at Karkat again and that best feeling got a little better. His co-pilot was all smiles and exasperation, swatting the other trolls away in a way that indicated he didn’t actually mind their presence, and his eyes met Dave’s as he finally wrestled his way out of Terezi’s grip, giving him a smile. 

Dave smiled back, his stomach suddenly performing olympic gymnastics as he stared at the troll. His mind was full of images from the Drift, swirling with memories of the two of them moving in perfect harmony in the cockpit of _Prometheus_ , slicing a Kaiju in half before plummeting back to Earth. Karkat looked even better than he had when they’d fought in downtown Hong Kong, his cheeks slightly flushed and his eyes still sharp with adrenalin. 

Then Karkat offered Dave a fist. “Two kills,” he said, grinning down at the human, and Dave felt something grip his heart and give it a little squeeze. 

He maintained his composure, bumping Karkat’s fist with his own. “Fuck yeah,” he said. “First two of many.” 

Karkat’s whole face was alight, his grin wider with every passing second. The troll leaned over to rest an arm on Dave’s shoulder as the crowd continued to whoop and cheer around them, and after a moment Dave felt his co-pilot actually pull him into a hug. 

“Told you we could do it,” Karkat whispered in Dave’s ear. 

Dave returned the hug, one hand pressed against Karkat’s back and the other resting on his shoulder, and he couldn’t ignore everything his mind, his body, his heart had been telling him for days now, everything he had seen in the Drift, everything he had felt when he and Karkat had fought side by side. He’d been held back by his past screaming in his head, but this was different, this was real, and the two of them had just done their part in saving the world. 

Dave leaned back as Karkat released him slightly, and he found himself staring up into the troll’s eyes, liquid red and impossibly beautiful. He could barely think, barely speak, he was just driven in his heart by a clarity of purpose he had never felt before, he had only felt in the presence of his co-pilot. This was right, this was real, and he couldn’t stop staring. Karkat stared back at him and something shifted in his gaze, something that almost looked welcoming, almost looked hopeful. 

As they stood there, surrounded by their cheering fellow pilots, by LOCCENT staff and engineering personnel, under the countdown clock that ticked ever onwards towards oblivion, Dave leaned up almost before he’d registered he’d done so, going just onto his tiptoes, and closed the distance between himself and Karkat, pressing his lips against the troll’s in an unexpected, unrestrained kiss. 

Dave felt that Karkat was surprised for all of a microsecond before he responded, his mouth hot on Dave’s, his lips surprisingly gentle despite how much of a troll’s face consisted of razor sharp teeth. Dave felt like every nerve ending in his body was on fire, his entire being focused on the feel of the troll kissing him back, one of his clawed hands resting on Dave’s hip almost delicately while the other slipped up to rest against his neck, the two of them breathing each other in, tasting each other, surrounded by a sea of people who suddenly didn’t exist. It was just the two of them, a connection like the Drift but stronger, closer, more profound, and all Dave could register, all Dave could feel or think about, was Karkat, was how kissing him here in the atrium surrounded by everyone felt so incredibly right, like it was something he should have done the moment he met him. 

Dave felt Karkat sigh against his lips as they both deepened the kiss and then let out a sound Dave had heard before, that strange but comforting clicking rumble in his chest, an insectoid chirring sound. It sent Dave’s mind back to the night his co-pilot had woken him from his nightmare, had held him close to comfort him, and suddenly a wave of past guilt crashed over him, a sick shame as suddenly his eldest brother’s voice rang in his ears. 

_Just what in the fuck do you think you’re doing, you sick freak?_

He and Karkat broke the kiss simultaneously, expressions mirroring each other in feelings of shame, disgust, fear. Dave heard the clicking die in Karkat’s chest as his cheeks flooded with colour, his eyes widened in that sick self-loathing Dave recognized because it was as potent as his own, and they stepped away from each other, almost stumbling back with the force of their individual realizations. Dave felt sick. He’d _kissed_ Karkat. He’d kissed _Karkat_. Right here in the atrium in front of literally everybody, without even thinking about it. 

Dave stared around the crowd in one blurring moment, suddenly flooded with the urge to run. Karkat was staring at him, shocked, confused, hurt, and off to the side Dave could see Vriska with her arms folded across her chest, lips curved in a smug sneer. 

That tipped the scale. Dave turned on his heel and took off through the crowd as fast as he could, the hordes of engineers and personnel parting to let him through. He didn’t know where he was going, he just knew that he needed to get away from there, needed to get away from Karkat, needed to calm down, needed to think. 

A murmur rushed through the crowd as he ran, but Dave didn’t care, absconding down the nearest hallway. He couldn’t believe he’d let his guard down like that, had actually thought for a second that he was safe from his past, that he was free of everything his brother had put him through, that he could actually admit to the maelstrom of swirling emotions that assaulted him every time he actually thought about Karkat… 

_Sick freak joke of a boy, you’ll never be a man if you think about boys like that you little f-_

“NO.” He’d made his way to his room automatically and he wheeled the door open frantically, slamming it shut behind him and pressing his back against it like it was his physical barrier separating him from those memories, from the drawl of his brother’s voice, from the disappointment, the scorn. 

He knew it was bullshit. Of course Dave knew it was bullshit, he’d known his oldest brother was full of shit for years, but there was a difference between telling himself that and actually believing it to be true. He’d never had to question his sexuality like this before, it was something he’d always been content to let lie dormant as he dealt with more important things, like helping the rest of his family save the fucking world. 

Dave stepped away from the door and sat down on the corner of his bed, putting his head in his hands. He’d been fine, absolutely fine, until he’d Drifted with Karkat. 

Karkat. The angry veteran pilot who carried the weight of his past sins with him everywhere he went, the passionate troll who never stopped fighting for the people he cared about. The man who was just as confused about all of this as Dave was, though it was admittedly for a very different reason. He sighed. And he’d bolted, leaving his co-pilot in the crowd so he could hide from the truth, from the only other person who had been inside his head, the only person who had ever understood. 

Fuck, he was a selfish asshole, wasn’t he? 

He heard a knock on his door and his stomach twisted automatically in a strange slurry of hope and terror. Had Karkat followed him? Were they going to talk this out now? He swallowed, he wasn’t ready, he had barely even begun to process everything running through his mind. “Yeah?” he called, knowing his voice was higher than normal. 

“Dave, it’s Rose,” he heard his sister’s voice filter through the door and he blinked. “May I come in?” 

He shifted and sighed. “Sure,” he said, resting his palms on the edge of the bed. “Door’s open.” 

Dave watched as his sister pushed open the door to his room and stepped inside, a small canvas bag perched on her shoulder. She looked bruised and exhausted, but better than he had expected. Experience probably helped the recovery time when it came to Kaiju attacks. Rose didn’t speak for a moment, instead looking down at him with a polite scrutiny, but then she crossed the room to sit next to him on the bed, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I thought that perhaps, in light of everything, you might be seeking someone to talk to.” 

He huffed out an exasperated breath. “What was your first clue?” he snarked. “The part where I kissed my co-pilot in front of the entire Shatterdome and then ran away like a little bitch?” 

“You know I hate that word, David,” Rose gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow. “But yes, your public display of affection with your co-pilot followed by your rapid egress from the scene did give me some subtle indicators that you are dealing with what I expect you would describe as ‘some grade-A shenanigans’, and you therefore might benefit from the listening ear of your twin sister.” 

Dave flopped backwards onto his unmade bed, staring up at the ceiling. He was silent for a long time before he finally figured out how to phrase what he wanted to say to her. “Rose, when did you figure out you… liked girls?” 

She shifted slightly and Dave heard her rummaging through her bag. After a few moments he heard the steady clack and shuffle of knitting needles, and Rose hummed thoughtfully for a moment. “It was when we were living with Dean in Texas,” she said, and Dave could hear the grimace in her voice. “I would spend those nights with the girl who lived down the street, remember?” 

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Kept you away from the worst of the shit he’d try to pull. What about it?” 

His sister paused, the sound of her knitting needles erratic and hesitant. “The girl down the street was how I figured out I liked girls, David.” 

He blinked slowly. “Oh,” he said, feeling his cheeks colour a little. “Huh.” He swallowed. “Did… Bro ever find out?” 

“He did,” she said, her tone quiet. “Asked a lot of very uncomfortable questions about it before I informed him it had been a childish phase and he finally dropped it.” 

Dave felt the anger at his long-dead brother flare in his gut. That fucker. “After he found out about us being, you know,” he sat up, making a motion between the two of them to indicate their switching identities, their genders. “He, well, spent a lot of time explaining to me what it meant to be a ‘real man’,” he made the air quotes with his fingers, his tone bitter. “A large portion of that was informing me in no uncertain terms that real men weren’t interested in other men.” He sighed, loudly, unable to look at his sister. “It’s been five years and he just won’t get out of my head, Rose,” he said. “Even after all of this.” 

She nodded, still knitting. “You’ve spent that time dealing with many facets of the abuse he put you through,” she said. “However, your less than active romantic life has left that particular aspect of his treatment unexplored, unexposed. These last few days in such close contact with Karkat have obviously brought them to the surface.” 

“It’s not because of-” he opened his mouth to protest automatically, but then stopped. His insistence on being straight and narrow had become second nature to him, a reflex after years of having that very aspect of his personality literally beaten into him. He sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “I just… don’t have the first clue how to fuckin’ handle this.” 

Rose finished the row on the scarf she was knitting before placing the needles in her lap and then resting a hand on his shoulder again. “I know you hate it when I state the obvious, but have you and Karkat talked about this?” 

Dave sighed, resisting the urge to upgrade to a full blown groan. “Not yet,” he said. “But…” 

“But?” Rose prompted. 

“I mean, we’ve been Drifting almost nonstop for days,” he continued, feeling his face getting hot. “He probably knows what’s going on in my head better than I do at this point.” 

“It’s likely,” she agreed. “I’ve found over the years that Kanaya is frequently aware of what is bothering me long before I have found a way to articulate it.” 

He gave her a sharp look, fully aware of what she was implying. “Look,” he held up a hand. “I know that what you and Kanaya have is great and all, but… I mean…” he trailed off, trying to figure out exactly how to explain what he was feeling, what it was about her comparison of their situations that made his heart suddenly start beating rapidly in his chest. 

Rose leaned over and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. “What are you scared of, Dave?” she asked, her tone gentle. “Dean is dead, and you just took down two Kaiju in the first recorded double event in history. What do you have left to fear?” 

He squeezed her hand back. She was right, of course she was, other than his co-pilot nobody knew him better than his twin sister. “Karkat’s… dealing with his own shit,” he said, finally. “Shit about, like, quadrant stuff?” he could feel his face heating up just thinking about it. “Like… he’s into me, that’s been obvious even when we haven’t been jacked into each other’s thinkpans, but it’s not clear-cut. One minute it’s a sloppy makeout zone and the next he’s got me in a full pale papshoosh.” He winced, feeling the memory’s of Karkat’s shame nudge at him. “It’s got him pretty torn up.” 

Rose nodded. “Kanaya has had similar conundrums in the past,” she said. “While our relationship falls rather comfortably into a the traditional troll definition of red romance, human dating goes hand in hand with frequent vacillations into pale and sometimes darker territories.” She smiled mildly, returning to her knitting. “In fact, I highly suspect that when I came to find you after the incident in the atrium, Kanaya was the one who went to find him.” 

“Huh,” he said. He really should have expected that. Of all the people to have insight into their situation right now, it was his sister and her co-pilot. 

“So, you are afraid because Karkat is dealing with his own issues?” she asked, pressing the issue. 

“Sort of,” he sighed, hating how red his face was. “It’s more that I know he’s dealing with those issues. I know his hang ups, he knows mine, and it almost makes it worse, because I know that he knows what’s wrong with me.” He flopped back on his bed, back to staring up at the ceiling. “I’m scared because I can’t hide, Rose,” he said, hating the truth, hating himself for speaking it. “I can’t keep anything from him, even the things I want to keep from myself.” 

Rose was quiet for a moment, nothing but the click of knitting needles breaking the silence of Dave’s room. When she spoke, it was in her characteristically calm tone, one that normally annoyed the shit out of Dave but he knew was warranted at this point. “Before the two of you set foot back in _Prometheus_ , you need to talk this out,” she said. “If this continues to fester it could cause the two of you to drop out of alignment mid-battle, and you know that’s something you can’t afford.”

Dave scowled, sitting up again. “Why is it that every time you pick my brain apart the end result is always bludgeoning me into talking out my problems like a well-adjusted person instead of shoving it all down and ignoring it?” 

“Clearly all I want in life is to make you suffer,” she said, her tone scathing. “Suffer through achieving actual coping skills. I am the worst sister ever.” 

Dave elbowed her in the side, snorting. “Just the fucking worst,” he agreed. 

She slipped her knitting back into the bag and stood up, holding out a hand to him. “Come on,” she said. “Kanaya said she and Karkat were going to the mess hall. I suspect the sooner the two of you have this conversation, the better?” 

Dave sighed. There was no avoiding it, and as much as he hated it, she was right, and no chance in hell was she letting go of it. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

They both headed for the door, Dave feeling nerves suddenly gnawing at his insides. He was never going to be ready for this, so he might as well get it over with. The sound of his comm beeping was a welcome distraction, and his raised a hand to his ear, barely noticing that Rose was doing the same, also getting a message. “Sup.” 

“Dave, Rose,” It was Dirk, his tone agitated, and Dave turned to Rose, frowning, as she did the same to him. “I heard back from Roxy, she was in Hong Kong during the attack.” 

Dave felt his insides turn to ice, suddenly feeling sick. “Fuck,” he said, and he and Rose picked up the pace, leaving Dave’s room quickly. “Is she okay?” 

“As much as she can be,” he replied. “Listen, I need you to come up to the top to meet us when we get here, the Mirthful Messiah went to hook her up with a brain and she ended up getting an entire miniature Kaiju out of the deal.” 

Dave felt his jaw drop. “An entire what?” 

“Yeah, turns out one of the fuckers you and Karkat took down was pregnant,” Dirk said. “Have everybody on standby, the science team is coming back with an goddamned Kaiju baby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! Just in time for December! 
> 
> To everyone who's been yelling 'NOW KISS' for chapters? OUO. 
> 
> Next week, we get Karkat's take on the situation. Thanks again to everyone for reading, leaving comments, and kudos. I appreciate all of them so much, especially since I'm heck deep in final projects right now. You're all the absolute best.


	15. Don't Be Afraid To Try Again

_Well we all have a face_   
_That we hide away forever_   
_And we take them out and show ourselves_   
_When everyone has gone_   
_Some are satin some are steel_   
_Some are silk and some are leather_   
_They're the faces of the stranger_   
_But we love to try them on_

_Well, we all fall in love_  
 _But we disregard the danger_  
 _Though we share so many secrets_  
 _There are some we never tell_  
 _Why were you so surprised_  
 _That you never saw the stranger_  
 _Did you ever let your lover_  
 _See the stranger in yourself_  
\-- From ‘The Stranger’ by Billy Joel  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnlvPoDU5LY))  
__ 

Karkat and Kanaya were still mid-feelings jam (it was definitely a feelings jam, Karkat couldn’t deny that what they had going on at this moment was just a pile and a pap away from getting pale as all hell) when Kanaya got a message from Rose. She looked concerned for a moment, then put away her phone and stood up.

“What’s up?” Karkat asked, her expression speaking volumes, none of them clear. 

“The science team is returning with their cargo,” she said, her tone grave. “Rose and Dave request our presence in the atrium to wait with them for their sister’s arrival.” 

“Why do they need us?” Karkat felt his digestion sac clench. He knew he needed to talk to Dave, especially after everything Kanaya had said, but that didn’t make it any easier a task. 

“I suspect that due to the direct involvement of Doctor Lalonde in acquiring this specimen, both Rose and Dave could use some emotional support,” she suggested. “As their co-pilots, we are best suited to that task.” 

“The fuck do they need emotional support for?” Karkat’s nerves translated easily into anger, his tone harsher than his intent. “Roxy’s alive, right?” 

“Alive, yes, but she has been through a harrowing ordeal from the sound of things,” Kanaya stood up, carrying her tray towards the trash conveyer. Karkat followed her. “Considering everything the Strider-Lalonde family has gone through recently, I’m sure you can understand Rose’s desire for comfort.” 

“Fine, that’s your reason for going lined up, but what the fuck does that have to do with me?” 

She sighed, turning to give him a look. “Karkat, what we are experiencing currently is a very brief calm before a violently gathering storm. This would be the perfect opportunity for you and Dave to actually talk to each other, as we previously discussed.” 

Karkat froze, the churning in his digestion sac only getting worse. “You mean… now?” 

Kanaya rolled her eyes, her skin gaining its customary rainbow drinker glow as they stepped out into the hallway. “No, Karkat, I mean after the proverbial storm has struck and left ruination in its wake. Obviously I mean now.” 

She was walking quickly, in long strides, and Karkat almost had to run to keep up. “I…” he sighed. Fuck, of course she was right, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t panicking. “Shit, how do I even start?” 

“I’d recommend some level of politeness, even though I know it is not your accustomed behaviour,” she said, making Karkat scowl. “Simply take him aside and express your desire to have a civil discussion of the issues you are currently experiencing, and your willingness to help him deal with the issues you know he is experiencing too.” 

“Well when you put it that way it sounds easy as all fuck, can’t imagine why I’d be freaking out,” he grumbled, his shoulders slumping slightly. 

They turned a corner to cross into the atrium and Karkat felt a little sick as he saw Dave, standing with Rose near the elevators. Their eyes met as Kanaya picked up the pace, walking over quickly to pull Rose into a tight hug, and Karkat saw Dave’s cheeks flush a little, clearly as anxious about this as he was. Stepping around Rose and Kanaya, Karkat raised a hand to wave at Dave, stiff and awkward. “Hey,” he said. 

“Sup,” Dave replied, giving him a little nod. 

They stood next to each other briefly, watching the others embrace, before Karkat broke the uncomfortable silence. “So, Roxy’s okay?” 

“Yeah,” Dave nodded again. “Ended up in a public shelter in the Bone Slums. She was fine,” he said, noticing Karkat’s head jerk in concern at the name, that was where they had been fighting Bela just hours ago. “Once the attack was over and she got out, she went back to talk to her contact, the Mirthful Messiah, and he was working his fucked up magic on what was left of Canker. His team got in there to extract the brain and they found out that that big gross ball of tentacles and ass teeth had a baby on board.” 

Karkat’s jaw dropped. “It what?” his voice was hoarse, his eyes wide in shock. 

“Yep,” Dave’s expression was grim, like he could hardly believe it himself. “That nasty fucker was pregnant.” 

“Jegus,” Karkat murmured, folding his arms across his chest, frowning. “How is that even fucking possible?” 

“I mean, Eridan won’t shut up about how the Kaiju keep evolving and shit,” Dave said, shrugging. “Sending one of them through the Breach when it’s got a bun in its oven is like, I don’t know, a Kaiju times two combo, a double event in and of itself. Double event-ception.” 

“Dave,” Karkat couldn’t keep himself from giving his co-pilot a Look. “Running away with the metaphor.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved his hand at Karkat, and for a moment the awkwardness was gone, it was just like every other time they’d been together. Every time before… 

It was back, just like that, the second Karkat thought about the way Dave’s lips felt against his, that moment just an hour or two ago, not far from this very spot, where Dave had kissed him and Karkat had felt like he had finally come back to a home he’d never known had existed. 

Until he’d started clicking, of all things. God he was a worthless excuse for a troll, wasn’t he? His co-pilot kissed him and suddenly Karkat was being pale as fuck. Kanaya could remind him again and again that vacillation was perfectly normal and expected between humans and trolls, but that didn’t stop him from feeling ashamed of himself. 

Karkat coughed a little, shoving the memory down, fuck this was going to turn into a disaster if he didn’t get his shit together. “So, they came across this little horrorterror wiggler. Is that what they’re bringing to the lab?” 

“What’s left of it,” Dave said. “It was still alive when they found it and it kicked up one hell of a fuss before its lungs gave out. Dirk said that he couldn’t make out much in terms of the details when Roxy called, she was flipping her shit, but it sounds like the little dude ate the Mirthful Messiah before it finally died.” 

“Fuck,” Karkat breathed. He’d heard a little in his time working on the wall about the Asian crime syndicates and the troll who supposedly ran them, but the only thing he actually knew about the Mirthful Messiah was that he was a tough customer. Who had just been eaten by a Kaiju baby. There really was no way for them to predict what was going to happen next during this war, was there? “How’d it die?” 

“Like I said, lungs gave out,” Dave shrugged, watching Rose and Kanaya walk towards the elevators, leaving Dave and Karkat alone. “It wasn’t done with the gestation period, apparently, so as soon as it popped out it tried to breathe and its gross little Kaiju lungs couldn’t process the oxygen without help from mom.” 

“Right,” Karkat tried not to feel anxious about the fact that the two of them had been left alone to talk. He’d seen Kanaya and Rose glance back at them before leaving and they’d worn twin expressions of expectation, hope, knowing what the two of them were about to do. Or at least attempt to do. “Well, this situation just keeps getting more and more shithive maggots, doesn’t it?” 

“It really does,” Dave agreed. 

They stood in silence for a moment, everything unsaid weighing between them, until Karkat finally sucked it up, drawing in a breath and looking down at the floor as he spoke. “We… should talk.” 

He could almost feel Dave tense up beside him, didn’t need to look to know he was immediately fidgeting with the corner of his shirt, shoving his other hand in his pocket. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice cracking a little. “We… we should.” 

Silence hung between them once more until as one they started walking, falling into step as they headed for the training room. Karkat wasn’t sure exactly why this had become the default place for them to go when they needed to work something out, but even just in the few days they’d been co-pilots, they’d found that there was something safe and comforting about the racks of practice weapons, the lingering smell of sweat, the blue softness of the thick mats on the floor. 

The fact that it was the same room where they had fallen asleep after training and Dave had woken up from his nightmare only to throw himself into Karkat’s arms had nothing to do with this plan, nope, nothing whatsoever. 

The sat down on the long bench that ran parallel to the far wall, Dave’s foot jiggling compulsively on the floor as he fidgeted with his hands. Karkat knew he was nervous, but it wasn’t his body language that told him that, it was absolutely the Drift. It was like this unspoken secret between the two of them that everything they’d been through in the last few days, every simulation and battle, every stray thought and internal argument, every doubt and fear, had been laid bare between them. 

Dave knew everything Karkat tried to hide about himself, and that was the hardest part of all of this. 

“So…” Dave began, his shades pointed firmly at a spot on the floor. “Who talks first, do you wanna talk first? Should I talk first?” 

“For fuck’s sake,” Karkat scowled, also looking at the floor. “We both know why we’re here, Dave, who gives a fuck who talks first?” 

“If we both know why we’re here then why talk at all?” Dave replied, his voice tight. “We both know what’s going on courtesy of our tight as shit neural bridge, who needs verbal communication?” 

“You know as well as I do that the number one way to cause Rabbiting in combat is leaving things unsaid,” Karkat snapped back, folding his arms. “That’s how you ended up with a brainful of Gamzee’s gruesome death and how I know and understand more about human family dynamics than I ever thought was fucking possible.” He sighed, turning a bit to face his co-pilot, who still stubbornly stared at the floor. “We need to talk this out, and you know it, so stop fucking around.” 

“Okay,” Dave huffed out a breath. “So talk it out. You want it so bad, you go first.” 

Karkat scowled, turning back to face away from Dave as he felt his bloodpusher start to pump a little faster. He didn’t say anything for a minute or two, steeling himself, trying to figure out where the fuck to start. He went with the obvious thing. “You kissed me.” 

Dave shrugged a shoulder, foot still tapping against the floor. “You kissed me back.” 

“Then you ran off,” Karkat continued, his guts twisting as he tried to parse his emotions. “Like you regretted it.” 

Dave sucked in a breath, his hands still fidgeting at loose bits of thread along his shirt. “I didn’t.” 

“You still ran though.” 

“I know.” 

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” 

“You were scared.” 

“Obviously.” 

“Why were you scared?” 

“You know why.” 

“Dave, the whole point of this is that we fucking talk about it, so stop dodging the fucking question and tell me why you were scared!”

“Because I wanted it!” Dave’s voice was like a gunshot, echoing around the room, his tone strained like he was holding back tears. “Because I wanted it and I’m not supposed to want to...” he trailed off, his fists clenching. “To want to kiss…” 

Karkat took pity on him. “Boys?” 

“Yes,” Dave gasped, his shoulders shaking a little. His knuckles were white. “It’s stupid. It’s fucking stupid. There’s literally nothing wrong with wanting to kiss boys, to date boys, to find boys attractive. You’d think I’d be more hung up about the fact that you’re a goddamned alien but nope, turns out the Strider pathology is focused entirely on gender identity and has nothing to do with xenological fuckery.” 

Dave was babbling a bit, running his mouth like he always did when he was upset, but Karkat didn’t want to do anything to make it worse. As much as he wanted to pull Dave close, to hug him and to pap his face, to soothe him, it wouldn’t help either of them. The last thing Dave needed was for Karkat to touch him, and the last thing Karkat needed was to get pale when his feelings for Dave couldn’t settle in any one quadrant. 

Karkat settled on sighing, putting a hand down between them but not moving any closer. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I swear I’m not trying to make shit harder for you.” 

“No!” Dave’s answer was a little too quick, his motion to grab Karkat’s hand a little too fast, and he looked at the troll through his shades with a little frown on his face, disbelieving and almost pitiful. “Karkat, fuck, this isn’t you doing this, you know that, this is all me, me and my past and my piece of shit brother who didn’t know how to raise a kid, let alone a transgender kid.” He seemed to realize that he’d taken Karkat’s hand, but he didn’t let go, and Karkat was grateful. “I know you’ve felt all of it, but my bullshit isn’t your bullshit. I know you’ve got enough going on in your thinkpan without all of this that I’ve got going on.” 

Karkat grunted, aware of how warm Dave’s hand was, how tightly it gripped his own. “You’ve been in my head, Dave,” he said, looking away. “I’ve been in yours. The second we went into the Drift together we were laying all our fucked up problems out for each other to see. It’s not just your shit, it’s my shit too, and I…” he swallowed, nervous again. “I want to help.” 

“I don’t know how the fuck we can help each other,” Dave said, deflating slightly, looking small and afraid again. “This is some deep-seated psychological trauma that’s been inflicted on us by society, not a few punches to the gut and a bad dream. We can’t just walk it off. Pretty sure Rose could take us for all we’re worth if she wanted to actually made a living out of being a therapist.” 

“I know,” Karkat tried to be patient, but he was so frustrated. “I know, and I… understand.” 

“And that’s the worst fucking part!” Dave said, leaning forward, taking off his shades to press his free hand to his face. “I’ve been shoving this down for years, Karkat, pushing it away my whole life, locking it down in the high-tech Strider mental vault. I didn’t need to deal, I could just have the nightmares and feel guilty every time I had a crush on some guy and just let it fester, let it be.” He turned to look at Karkat, his expression bitter, full of self-loathing. “Then you got in my head and I couldn’t hide from anything any more.” 

His honesty, his candor, his lack of snarky quips and ironic memetics, threw Karkat for a bit of a loop. He’d known how Dave had felt, of course he had, but something about hearing it out loud changed it, made it more real. Dave couldn’t hide from him, and he hated it, just like Karkat hated how much he couldn’t hide from Dave. 

Karkat huffed out another little breath and sighed, letting go of Dave’s hand. “It’s pretty fucking redundant to say I know how you feel, but it’s true,” he said, his tone low, rumbling. “I was perfectly content to ignore the shit running around my thinkpan before you stomped through it. Now somebody else has seen what a mutant fuck-up I am and there’s nothing I can do about it.” 

Dave frowned at that. “You’re not a fuck-up,” he said. “Just like I know you’d say I’m not a freak.” 

“I know,” Karkat leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. “Everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve heard, talking to Kanaya and Terezi and living on Earth for the last five years, it’s shown me that there’s nothing wrong with it, with…” he felt the word catch in his throat and he felt so stupid, he could barely even say it. “... vacillation. But I just… that shit is fucking ingrained in us, it’s fundamental, anyone who operates outside of that system is sick, damaged, weak.” 

Dave’s tone was gentle. “I know,” he said, and Karkat hated that he did. “Trolls have quadrants, humans have sexuality, these analog situations we seem to be in are fucking astounding, almost like we’re ridiculously Drift compatible or something.” 

“Oh fuck off,” Karkat growled, hunching a little lower. “I get it, you understand, you don’t have to shove it in my face.” 

“Oh, right,” Dave said, tone sarcastic, his foot starting to tap again. “Because your understanding of all these bees in my bonnet about human sexuality is so refreshing, I can’t get enough of it.” 

Karkat’s scowl deepened, his fists clenching. “Look, I never asked for an insight into the bullshit mayhem of human homophobia, but here I am, actually understanding why it’s freaking you out that you’re not straight!” 

“Good for you,” Dave snapped, his face as red as his eyes. “I never wanted an all-access pass to the foursquare rumpus asshole factory of troll attraction, but now I’m sitting here understanding why you’re freaking the fuck out because you’re not quadromantic!” 

They both fell silent, the room echoing with their words, and Karkat was sure he was feeling just as sick as Dave was. His bloodpusher was pounding, his palms sweaty, and he couldn’t look at his co-pilot, couldn’t admit to him what he’d been so afraid to admit to himself since long before this smug, ridiculous, beautiful, miraculous human had walked into his life holding an umbrella and smirking behind a pair of aviators. 

Of course, he didn’t have to. Dave already knew how he felt. Dave understood what it meant when Karkat had kissed him back in the atrium, when he’d slammed him into the mat during training, when he’d soothed him after a nightmare with clicks and chirrs and a gentle shooshpap. 

Dave understood everything and Karkat knew he’d never be able to hide again. He couldn’t fucking stand it, not because it was invasion of his very essence, of his self, but because he wanted it, wanted someone to understand, to show him that it was okay. 

It didn’t feel like giving up, it felt more like giving in. It felt so good he was sick with it, so relieved that he wasn’t alone, and he was just so fucking angry that all of this was happening because of Dave. 

He let out a shaky sigh and squeezed his hands together, still not looking at Dave. It took him a while to form words again. “Relationships outside the quadrants, ones that blur them, that merge them, are straight up taboo on Alternia,” Karkat said. He knew Dave knew all this, but he also knew it needed to be spoken aloud, needed to be something they both witnessed. “Vacillation, that’s not as uncommon, it’s disruptive and weird and goes against the norm but you see trolls flip from pitch to flushed all the time, see moirails become matesprits when circumstances change for the couple.” He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling that deep sense of shame creep over him again. 

Dave picked up where he left off, speaking the words Karkat had so much trouble voicing. “Feelings that fit in more than one quadrant at once just aren’t something that’s done, right?” 

“Yeah,” Karkat nodded. “Wanting someone in more than one quadrant… in every quadrant…” his breath caught in his throat, his head spinning at the fact that he was even beginning to admit this to himself. “It means you’re wrong. Greedy. Broken. Doomed to a life of misery, of rejection.” He could feel tears threatening in the corners of his eyes and he wasn’t even sorry now. The dam had burst, the walls crumbling. “When I lost Gamzee, I figured that was it. I’d barely found a moirail, and then he was gone, so I was just fucked. An aquadromantic mess, destined to be a mutant and alone. Karkat Vantas, this is your life, and if the horrorterrors don’t get you, your own loneliness will.” 

Dave was silent for a while, and this time it was him who put his hand down in the space between them on the bench. He still wasn’t wearing his shades, and when Karkat looked at him he was staring at a spot on the opposite wall, voice full of strange mix of resignation and relief. “I guess I’ll never know why my bro was such a hardass about me being the manliest most heterosexual dude who ever existed in the history of human dudes,” he said. “I know Rose suspects it has something to do with his own hang-ups about his sexuality, but whatever, he’s dead now, can’t exactly ask him.” 

“I could see it,” Karkat said. “What’s that line in Hamlet? ‘Methink the lady doth protest too much’?” 

He saw a smile ghost across Dave’s face. “One of my favourite side-effects of this Drift shit is how much you know about Shakespeare, dude.” 

“How could I miss it?” Karkat grumbled. “Your mind is like an encyclopedia of trauma and useless human cultural history.” 

“Ain’t nothin’ useless about the Bard, man,” Dave said, the smile gaining a little life. “The only difference between him and your troll romcoms is your shit has quadrants in addition to all the cross-dressing and mistaken identity.” 

Karkat felt himself smiling too, in spite of his anxiety. “That was where it started, right?” He asked. “You and Rose figuring out you were trans I mean.” 

Dave nodded. “When we were little, I mean real little, Mom and Dad used to take all five of us to this theatre company in Texas, and they’d do Shakespeare plays. We saw a few different shows, but the one that really stuck with me was _Twelfth Night_.” 

Karkat had to shuffle through the weird amalgam of his and Dave’s memories before the significance registered. “The character who disguises herself as a boy, right?” 

Dave chuckled. “Doesn’t really narrow it down actually,” he admitted. “But yeah, Viola disguises herself as a dude to protect herself from wayward horndogs, goes to work for the Count who she ends up falling for, shenanigans ensue. I don’t know,” he shrugged again. “It was the first time I’d seen that kind of thing, a girl assuming the identity of a boy, and it just… felt right, the more I thought about it.” 

“Then you and Rose traded places for fun,” Karkat continued, remembering. “To see what it felt like.” 

“And it felt like I belonged there,” Dave nodded again. “Nothing had ever felt like mine until the moment my twin started calling me Dave,” he said. “Then everything just kinda... clicked.” 

Karkat felt his lips quirk into a wider smile. Dave’s sharing of this moment in his life, of speaking the memories aloud, touched him, made him feel closer to his co-pilot. 

Dave continued, hand still resting on the bench between them. “I guess all those years of listening to Dean tell me what it meant to be a man just kind of ate away at me,” he said. “It was like toxic masculinity on steroids or some shit. Being a real man meant sword fighting and being tough, never crying, hitting on girls, flirting with girls, talking about how much you wanted to get with girls.” He let out a laugh, and Karkat tried not to focus on how much he loved that sound. “You know, I’ve never been all that interested in just girls. Had a crush here and there but nothing serious. I tried for years, hard not to with my brother beating it into me that I’d be less of a man if I was anything but completely straight.” He shook his head, his voice cracking. “No matter how hard he’d hit me, how much he’d yell, I’ve just...” he trailed off, sighing. “I’ve never actually been straight at all.” 

Karkat could practically feel Dave’s shame, but he also knew he was relieved. Something in the way his voice changed, the way he breathed a little easier, the way that saying the words aloud, releasing them to the universe, let something in his heart fall into place. 

“So…” Karkat felt his voice crack and resisted the urge to kick himself. He sounded like an awkward virginal troll barely out of his first molt. “What does this mean… for us?” 

Dave shrugged his shoulder again, his face reddening again. “I don’t know,” he admitted. Karkat saw his head tilt slightly, his eyes dart over to look at him, and the troll felt his own cheeks redden. “What do you want it to mean?” 

Karkat didn’t say anything, but he put his hand down on the bench next to Dave’s, their fingers just barely touching. He heard Dave’s breath catch in his throat, and then he felt his co-pilot take his hand gently, intertwining their fingers. 

Karkat drew in a breath, glancing down at their interlocked hands and noticing the contrast of their skin, the delicate crescents of Dave’s fingernails compared to his dull orange claws, how the slender human hand was practically engulfed by the weathered troll one. His gaze flicked up to meet Dave’s and they stared at each other, expressions mirrors. 

“How about…” Karkat began, his mouth a little dry. “... We keep talking?” 

Dave nodded slowly, still staring into Karkat’s eyes. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That… sounds like a plan.” 

Dave’s comm beeped and the two of them broke the gaze, breaking contact also as Dave raised his hand to his ear to listen to whoever was speaking. “Sup bro,” he said. He listened quietly for a second, then grunted. “Cool, we’ll be right up.” Dave stood up, putting his shades back on, and he turned to look at Karkat. “Science team’s back,” he said. “Wanna come up and see what a baby horrorterror looks like?” 

Karkat snorted. “Only because I hope to fuck this is the only opportunity I’ll have to see one.” 

Dave smiled, his cheeks still flushed. “That’s the spirit.” 

They left the training room, heading back to the atrium in silence. This wasn’t the awkward discomfort they had felt earlier though, things were now back to a calm unspoken understanding, and Karkat was glad for it. 

It had stopped raining outside, but the wind was harsh, violently whipping Karkat’s hair around so it kept getting in his eyes. Grumbling a little, he brushed it aside and squinted at the approaching helicopters, at least three of them towing a massive horrorterror corpse that dripped ammonia-neutralized blood in dangerous splatters along the edge of the Shatterdome. He gaped, unable to help himself. “That’s a baby horrorterror?” 

“Right?” Dave agreed, his hand shading his eyes from the sun despite his shades. “Guess size really does matter.” Karkat rolled his eyes. 

Dirk was standing with Rose and Kanaya, and they were already waiting for the science team, moving crews standing by with a kind of tarp and dolly set-up rigged between them so they could transport the remains inside. Karkat had no idea how they expected to accomplish that - while the Kaiju was a scaled down version of the beast they had slain in Hong Kong, this didn’t stop it from dwarfing the choppers that transported it, and as he watched Karkat could see the creature’s tongue lolling from its mouth, caught between two teeth that were each as big as car doors. 

“How the fuck are they gonna get it inside?” he asked the assembled group at large. 

“I’m not sure they will,” Dirk said, watching as the choppers hovered, slowly lowering the carcass down towards the makeshift transport. “Time is of the essence, the sooner they can set up the Drift with the brain, the better.” 

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” Rose murmured, crossing her arms and frowning. “However successful that Drift was with the brain fragment, it could have killed her!” 

“The science team is working on a solution,” Dirk said. “And you know I agree with you, Rose, but at this point we don’t have a choice. If Eridan’s calculations are correct, and I’m sure they will be, much as it pains me to admit it, the next Kaiju attack could be even more devastating than the last. We need the information Roxy can get from that brain as soon as possible.” 

“Great,” Dave said, sarcastic. “So what, we get to just stand here and watch Roxy risk her life?” 

“That’s the plan!” Karkat and the others turned to see Roxy Lalonde approaching, a little shaky and leaning on Aradia’s arm. She looked like she’d lost a fight with a brick wall, her face bruised and her eyes bloodshot. “Totes worth it to save the world, little bro,” she gave Dave an unsteady wink. “Ain’t no riskier than the shit you pilots do every day in your Jaegers.” 

“The Drift doesn’t fry our thinkpans,” Karkat muttered, trying to ignore his concern, or the fact that a large portion of it was his own rather than the influence of his Drift with Dave. He barely knew Roxy, but she was part of the team. She was family. 

Karkat wasn’t sure what to do with that particular train of thought, but he was interrupted as the Kaiju carcass finally settled on the transport, all of them suddenly overwhelmed with the stink of acid runoff and feces. Roxy smiled proudly at the sight, still leaning heavily on her colleagues. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” she beamed, looking a little dizzy. “Too small to be a full category, more of a half-cat, quarter-cat, but still fucking fearsome. She ate that scary clown dude right up, it would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been the most fucked up thing I’d ever seen in my life, and I’ve done a lot of drugs.” 

Dirk clearly didn’t even know where to start with his sister, she was talking faster than any human Karkat had ever heard. The deputy marshall pinched the bridge of his nose behind his shades and sighed. “‘She’?” 

“Yeah!” Roxy beamed. “I call her Lindbergh.” 

Karkat and Dave exchanged a glance, expressions identical again. “Lindbergh?” they asked in unison. For once Karkat didn’t feel weird about it. 

“Like the stolen baby!” Roxy explained. “You know, like how I stole this Kaiju baby from the insides of her gross as fuck momma!” 

“That’s great, Rox,” Dirk was beyond exasperated now. “Perfect demonstration of your fucked up sense of humour. Can we please get your team to work cutting through its skull so you can Drift with the brain already?” 

“Fine, fine,” she rolled her eyes. “I’ll get to work, you can stop hovering, I swear, this family is just full of flighty broads breathing down my neck.” 

Roxy turned to head towards the baby Kaiju when the corpse suddenly convulsed, its stomach expanding like it was being inflated from the inside. She took a few halting steps backward as Dirk jumped in front of her, brandishing a sword that he had seemingly pulled out of thin air. Karkat and Dave both also instantly dropped into defensive stances, no weapons around but their fists, and out of the corner of his eye Karkat could see Rose and Kanaya do the same. 

“Another evolution?” Karkat muttered to Dave, and his co-pilot shrugged, having no idea either. All they could do was watch and wait. 

A narrow blade suddenly erupted from the Kaiju’s belly, slicing across it to expose rubbery tubes of guts and spidery nerve-fibers, half-formed organs that had been unable to sustain the young Kaiju’s life outside it’s mother. As Karkat watched, the blade retracted back into the beast’s body cavity, and a troll slid out of the freshly-created hole, covered in fluorescent blood and face down on the concrete. 

The figure coughed up some blood, thick and purple, and then managed to get his knees, letting out a noise that Karkat could only describe as a ‘honk’, a sound that made his blood turn to ice in his veins. 

It couldn’t be. It was impossible. 

The troll looked up at the assembled crowd briefly, eyes heavy-lidded and covered in intricate black and white paint, along with the rest of his face, which was also cut with three thick diagonal scars, before he slumped forward, alive but unconscious. He wore an expensive suit, in tatters after his apparent trip through a horrorterror’s digestive tract, and his hair was matted, but Karkat would have recognized him anywhere even after all this time, even after he had supposedly died. 

He thought of it as a miracle and his breath caught in his throat, his mouth dropping open in spite of his speechlessness. 

It was Dave beside him who finally voiced Karkat’s thoughts, and his voice was as strained with disbelief as Karkat’s would have been when he spoke, the name sounding to Karkat like a curse, a summoning, a sign. 

_“... Gamzee?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OUO
> 
> OSHITWADDUP 
> 
> I'd like to personally apologize for Roxy's terrible sense of humour, and not apologize at all for the Shakespeare references that come up over and over. That is all. 
> 
> Tune in next week, wherein I will finally exhaust my backlog, but fear not! It's almost winter break, where I will have three glorious weeks to write, sleep, and eat too much food while traveling to three different states. 
> 
> I'm going to go back to drowning in final projects now. Thank you again to everyone leaving comments and kudos, I wish I had time to thank each one of you for your lovely words, I appreciate them. Thanks so much for reading :)


	16. The Fire In Your Heart Is Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for smoking

_Today was gonna be the day_   
_But they'll never throw it back to you_   
_By now you should've somehow_   
_Realized what you're not to do_   
_I don't believe that anybody_   
_Feels the way I do_   
_About you now_

_And all the roads that lead you there were winding_  
 _And all the lights that light the way are blinding_  
 _There are many things that I would like to say to you_  
 _But I don't know how_  
\-- From ‘Wonderwall’ by Ryan Adams (Original ver. By Oasis)  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gVxRvNfFLg))  
__

Dave hesitated in the wake of the chaos, unsure if he should go with Karkat down to the infirmary to be with Gamzee or stay up on the top of the Shatterdome with Roxy as she prepped for her Frankenstein experiment. In the end he went with option C, which was to go to the far end of the overlook that faced Hong Kong City and indulge in one of his rare moments of vice. He bummed a cigarette from one of the engineers and sat with his legs dangling over the gutters that lined the top of the Shatterdome, breathing in carcinogenic smoke with a sigh.

“Those things’ll kill you, y’know.”

Dave didn’t turn around, he just smiled lazily as he took a long drag of the cigarette. “If the Kaiju don’t get me first. Besides, you’d know, it’s your fault I keep goin’ back to ‘em.”

“Letting you try one cigarette when you were eight doesn’t make me responsible for the shit you do now that you’re a grown-ass man,” Dirk said, sitting down next to him and holding out his hand. “Gimme.”

Dave passed him the cigarette, which he took a drag on before he passed it back. They stayed there in silence for a bit, looking out at the city in the distance. When they finished that cigarette, Dirk pulled a fresh one out of the pack in his pocket, and they repeated their previous routine with almost ritualistic adherence. Another neglected tradition of theirs brought to the forefront of their lives once again. Dave vaguely wondered if they were gonna pick up any more old habits after this, maybe go back to invading the Shatterdome kitchen at three in the morning to cook a massive Texas breakfast for their sisters, or host a rap battle from LOCCENT control.

Things had changed so drastically when Dirk became Deputy Marshall. Sitting here now, just like they had the day Dave and Rose had come to the Shatterdome over five years ago, all Dave saw was his brother the pilot, who had saved them the day Dean had died. They’d sat out here and shared half a pack of cigarettes and Dirk had promised him he’d make up for everything their eldest brother had put him through. He’d made good on it, time and time again, and Dave was finally understanding that.

“So,” Dirk said as he passed the cigarette back to Dave. “The Mirthful Messiah’s Karkat’s presumed-dead moirail, huh?”

“Yep,” Dave said, taking a long drag, feeling that twinge of shock and disbelief in his gut. “That’s… some fucked up shit.”

“You all right?”

Dave nodded. “Yeah, just… fucking shocked. I saw him get torn out of that cockpit in the Drift, felt it even, it was not something anyone normal would have survived.”

“Looks to me like Gamzee Makara’s far from normal, even for an alien,” Dirk shrugged. “From what Feferi’s told me, the so-called ‘highblood’ members of the species are particularly resilient. Apparently even when it comes to getting eaten by fucking Kaiju.”

“So, what, he got eaten and miraculously survived?” Dave processed what he’d just said and groaned. He really needed to stop using that word, the more he thought about it the more it made him want to punch things. This was almost entirely due to the part of his mind that remembered how much Gamzee loved to talk about how everything was ‘such a motherfuckin’ miracle, my bro’, and how much it drove Karkat crazy. Dave filed that away under his personal list of ways to annoy his co-pilot, then quickly remembered just how much of that qualified as flirting. He also felt his face redden slightly at how much he didn’t actually mind that right now.

“We’ll know more once he wakes up,” Dirk said. “I know that he first showed up in the Pacific Crime Syndicates shortly after the Miracle incident in Alaska, calling himself the Mirthful Messiah. Climbed to the top of the heap on the backs of the bodies he left in his wake, he pretty much wiped out all the black market leadership single-handedly and took over the entire Asian network, consolidated it and ripped out the spine of anybody who opposed him. Literally.”

Dave winced, passing the cigarette back to Dirk. “Guess he went sober then. He used to be doped up pretty much constantly, on anything Karkat could find him. Kept him calm and focused on fighting horrorterrors instead of giving into the chucklevoodoos and going on a clown murder spree.”

Dirk’s eyebrows went up. “Fuck,” he said, huffing out a small cloud of smoke. “You got all that from the Drift?”

Dave shrugged, still feeling a hint of a blush on his cheeks. “We’ve got a strong Drift,” he said. “Shit happened to him, I felt it, I saw it, I lived it. Just another weird mind-meld side-effect.”

“There’s strong Drifts and then there’s this shit,” Dirk said, waving the cigarette in front of Dave’s face, pointing at his head. “It’s one thing to be saying shit in unison and eating weird alien food without batting an eye, but it’s like you two are in the Drift together all the time.”

Dave shrugged again, taking the cigarette as he swatted Dirk’s hand away. “I figured that was just how the Drift worked,” he said, a bit awkward. “I mean, that’s how Rose and Kanaya are.”

“You know as well as I do that they’ve been head over heels in love with each other since the day they met,” Dirk snorted. “I’d hardly call that a comparable situation.”

Dave almost dropped the cigarette, coughing a little, knowing his entire face had turned scarlet. “Yeah, right,” he agreed, voice a little higher than normal. “Not a comparable situation at all. Not even a little.”

He swore he could hear Dirk’s eyebrows go up, and Dave refused to look at him, focusing hard on the concrete beneath his feet. “Huh,” Dirk let out a quiet little laugh. “Well, that changes things. Do I need to go have a fatherly talk with your co-pilot? Show him my shotgun, make him promise to do right by my dear and precious David L. Strider?”

Dave pressed his free hand to his face, feeling it somehow get hotter. “I swear to fuck, Dirk, I will throw you off the top of the Shatterdome and leave your stinking corpse for the seagulls.”

Dirk laughed, another sound Dave hadn’t heard in a long time, taking the cigarette back and placing it in the corner of his mouth, thoughtful. “I’m happy for you,” he said, his voice soft. “I know you’ve been lonely.”

Dave hummed a little, leaning back a bit so he could look up at the sky, mouth in a thoughtful frown. “I mean, I’ve always had friends here, so I don’t know if I’d use that word. Not in the least because it makes me sound like a pining teenager and that’s a level of pathetic I refuse to accept as part of my carefully cultivated persona.”

“Fair enough,” Dirk shrugged. “I only bring it up because…” he sighed, stubbing out the cigarette butt and then flicking it out into the bay. “I mean, I’m familiar with it.”

Dave raised an eyebrow. Was this him and Dirk having a feelings jam? The two most inscrutable dudes in the Interspec program talking about their emotions? He felt like he should be getting settled into a pile and prepping his pap hand. He shook his head, fuck trolls were weird. “Are we having a brotherly heart-to-heart?” he finally asked, deciding it was better to keep this shit in a human context. “I didn’t think that was the Strider way, bro.”

“It isn’t,” Dirk agreed. “But I’ve been thinking after everything that’s been going on, maybe we should change that.”

Dave felt himself smile. “I dunno man,” he said, giving his brother a sidelong glance. “Sounds kinda gay if you ask me.”

Dirk returned the look, his pointed shades tilted slightly as he turned his head. “Yup,” he replied. “It’s quite possibly the gayest thing a Strider could ever do. You know, besides want to kiss boys.”

“Better watch out,” Dave’s smile turned into a grin. “Last I heard Terezi was making that illegal.”

“This is my Shatterdome, she hasn’t got jurisdiction for that,” Dirk was laughing again. It was a good sound, almost like he wasn’t carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Then he sighed and the weight was back again, heavy, almost oppressive. “Not that it makes much difference to me.”

Dave shot his brother another look, this one full of sympathy and concern, also curiosity that he couldn’t contain. “Because of Jake?” he asked.

Dirk sighed a little deeper, leaning forward to hunch over a bit, looking ashamed, even a little sick. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “God knows I royally fucked that one up.”

Dave had never asked his brother about the Jake English situation, and vaguely wondered if his brother’s sudden willingness to talk about their feelings extended to sharing the details of that particular mystery. He blew out a breath, fidgeting a bit. “What happened between you two anyway?” he asked. “You’ve never told any of us about it.”

Dirk stiffened a bit, like he was bracing himself for some kind of blow. His face looked pinched, pained, as if the very thought of the situation was enough to make him hurt. Dave thought that maybe he was going to stay silent, continue to keep it to himself, but he finally spoke, his voice strained but clear. “Jake and I started dating when we were both Ranger cadets,” he said. “It was… well, it was love. Sounds stupid as fuck, but it’s the only word that ever fit. We piloted one of the Mark 1 Jaegers together when the program was first getting started, the one that rescued you and Rose, remember?” His mouth formed into a little lopsided smile. “ _Pistol Pony Rodeo_. Green and orange chrome, guns, and katanas. Unstoppable firepower, ludicrous speed.”

“Those were the ones made before the trolls came through the breach, right?” Dave asked. “The ones without the Drift?”

Dirk nodded. “Back then it wasn’t about compatibility, it was all about getting bodies in mechs and sending them out to fight. When Jake and I fought together, it was …” he smiled, sad and wistful. “It was like the way you and Karkat fight, the way Rose and Kanaya fight. We were a seamless team, completely in sync, or as in sync as two pilots could be without the neural bridge. When they adapted the Alternian Drift technology, after the Assault on the Breach, we both fully expected we would be Drift compatible.”

Dave felt his stomach churning, remembering that he’d felt the exact same way when he’d first arrived at the Shatterdome with Rose. “But you weren’t?”

Dirk looked away from him, Dave swearing he could see shame on his brother’s face. “I’m not Drift-capable,” he said. “I can’t Drift.”

Dave turned to actually stare at his brother, his mouth slightly open in disbelief. “Not at all?” he asked. “I thought everyone had at least some Drift capability.”

“It’s a small percentage of humans who can’t,” he shrugged, his tone a little hopeless. “Most of the time it’s due to some kind of traumatic brain injury or similar damage, some kind of medical condition, or in my case, a mental health condition.” He shook his head, mostly at himself. “The technician who tested me told me that my neural map had these… splinters…” he was hesitant now, like he was afraid of Dave’s reaction. “Any attempt to create a neural bridge would be hazardous to the health of both pilots.”

Dave felt a little sick, like he knew where the story was going next. “So you told Jake you couldn’t Drift… but he wanted to try anyway?”

Dirk let out a sound that Dave swore was almost a sob. “... He said he believed in me,” he said, his words choked and emotional. “And that he still wanted to try. Because I was worth it.” Dave saw his fists clench. “So we did a test Drift.”

Dave swallowed. He vaguely remembered a trip to the infirmary when he’d first arrived at the Shatterdome, his brother and Jake both lying in hospital beds, full of snaking tubes and wires, unconscious. “... What happened?”

Dirk was silent for a moment, and when he did speak it sounded like every word was like a stabbing pain for him to utter. “The fractures and splinters in my brain made it impossible for Jake’s mind to actually create a bridge to mine. When he tried, it…” his voice cracked and he sucked in a breath before he could continue. “It hurt him. Badly. A Drift is meant to be a two-way street, but all that splintering or whatever in my brain, basically makes it impossible for anyone to get in. Jane thinks it’s as psychological as it is medical, a kind of inability to give up control.” He laughed, bitter. “Not that anyone’s surprised that Dirk Strider is a closed off control freak, talk about putting that down in a memo titled ‘shit I already know’.”

Dave winced. “So how did Jake get hurt?”

“Instead of an open bridge, trying to Drift with me was like running headfirst into a wall,” Dirk said, his tone back to hopeless. “A wall that attacks. He ended up with some minor brain damage and massive helping of PTSD, and it made it practically impossible for him to Drift with anyone. Ever.” He was back to staring out at Hong Kong, fists still clenched. “He said it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t believe him. Couldn’t forgive myself for destroying him like that. So, he transferred to the science team, I started doing work with Marshal Egbert setting up Interspec, and we just… grew apart. Never talked about it again.” He took out the pack of cigarettes and lit another, this time keeping it for himself. “Every time I see him it’s like I feel my sins crawling on my back.”

Dave thought about the time he’d spent with Jake English during his time as an Interspec Officer, which had mostly been to fulfill the function of gopher between the scientist and the Deputy Marshal. Jake was polite, gregarious, and passionate, and had never been anything but sincerely friendly towards any discussion of Dirk, albeit it was a friendliness tinged with a longing, a regret that Dave had never understood.

He realized he barely knew his brother, and watching him sit on the edge of the Shatterdome, smoking a cigarette and fighting back tears behind his shades, Dave wanted nothing more than to find out what else Dirk had kept hidden from the world, to help him relinquish control of his own mind and let himself make amends.

Dave looked up at the sky again and wondered why he’d never thought to talk to Dirk before. He’d never been a feelings jam kind of guy, but it was like he understood the need for such things now, comprehended the benefits and necessities of expressing emotions instead of shoving them down.

He was pretty sure that was a Karkat thing. He didn’t really mind it.

“World’s ending, Dirk,” Dave said, shrugging. “Might be a good time to suck it up and actually talk to him about it.”

Dirk sighed, then sniffed hard, clearly doing everything he could to keep those tears under wraps. “You sound like Rose,” he said. “So much for talking to the good twin.”

“That’s our secret, Dirk,” Dave made his voice drop low, a bad Bruce Banner impression. “We’re both the evil twin.”

Dirk smiled, tapping cigarette ash into the gutter. “I knew that the moment you two were born,” he said. He shook his head and sniffed again, the worst of his threatening tears seeming to have subsided. “So, why are you sitting here slowly giving yourself cancer instead of keeping your co-pilot from flipping the fuck out over the sudden apparent reappearance of his dead moirail?”

Dave shrugged. “I dunno, Gamzee’s his moirail, not mine. Figured I didn’t have business getting all up in theirs.”

“The clown’s unconscious, Dave,” Dirk took a drag. “Don’t know if you remember but he’s only been awake long enough to cut himself out of the baby Kaiju and ask me where the motherfuck his motherfucking shoe ended up. Pretty sure Karkat’s just chillin’ out down there waiting for him to wake up, stewing in his own guilt about assuming he’s dead and giving up on trying to find him.”

Dave raised his eyebrows at his brother. “Okay, I know how I know that, how do you know that?”

Dirk smiled. “Remember who found Karkat after the Alaska incident? I’ve known your boyfriend a lot longer than you have.”

“He’s not-” Dave began, then he sighed. His face was red again, and he refused to look at his brother. “Whatever. You’re gonna be up here with Roxy?”

“Yeah, I can get you on the comm when the test is over,” he said. “If it’s successful we’ll have to move quickly, from the sound of things the reason there was a double event last time is because the Kaiju responded to Roxy drifting with them.”

Dave coughed, surprised. “I’m sorry, fucking what?”

“Yeah, Eridan thinks that’s why you had to kill two gargantuan monstrosities instead of one on your first day of work,” Dirk gave him a thumbs up, stubbing out his cigarette. “Anyway, I’ll hold down the fort with the science team. Go be with Karkat, he probably needs someone who can understand what he’s going through.”

“Yeah,” Dave stood up, dusting off his fatigues. “Keep me posted.”

“Will do,” Dirk said.

Dave started to walk away, but his brother reached up, catching him by the arm. He turned back to see Dirk looking up at him, his shades resting in his lap. It always came as a shock to see his brother’s eyes, a light brown colour that was almost a caramel orange. The Striders had never been much for visible emotion, so the tears in his brother’s eyes gave Dave some pause.

“I’m sorry,” Dirk said, his jaw tight. “I shouldn’t have let my fuck ups hold you back.”

Dave turned back to his brother and squeezed his hand, letting it go and then offering him a fist. “You were just trying to keep me safe, dude,” he said. “That’s what brothers do.”

Dirk tapped his fist against Dave’s, smiling weakly. “Fuck yeah,” he said. He slipped his glasses back on, turning back to the bay. “Good luck down there.”

“Sure,” Dave shrugged, his stomach in knots again. “Tell Rox I said to give ‘em hell.”

Dirk nodded, giving him a thumbs up, and Dave headed for the doors inside, still tasting the cigarettes on his tongue. He could see Roxy getting set up with her equipment, stumbling a little as Eridan fussed after her, complaining about the risk all of this was to her personal safety.

He smiled a little as he headed inside, wondering if the two of them would ever figure out what the fuck it was they were doing. Their bickering over the years had never been intense enough to qualify for anything explicitly caliginous, and the way they interacted now, the concern in Eridan’s voice and Roxy not actually consuming her emergency stash of vodka, definitely seemed pale.

Quadrants were a lot less confusing with an all-access pass into the mind of Karkat Vantas. Dave considered this as he stepped into the elevator, and chuckled to himself at the irony of it. His co-pilot was a veritable font of information on troll romance, but he was at least somewhat aquadromantic. Any gods that still existed sure had a fucked up sense of humour.

The infirmary was quiet, a few members of the nursing staff sitting at a desk reviewing files while Tavros wheeled across the hall, carrying samples of what looked like purple blood in a tray on his lap. Jane was nowhere to be seen, but Dave spotted Karkat easily as he reached the recovery suite, his co-pilot sitting in a chair beside the bed where Gamzee Makara lay.

“Hey,” he said, keeping his voice low, and Karkat glanced up at him, looking visibly relieved when he saw that it was Dave who had stepped into the room. “How’s he doing?”

Karkat sighed, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. “He’s gonna be out for a while,” he said, returning to watching the unconscious clown. “Jane says it’s mostly shock, turns out the body fucking shuts down when it gets eaten by a horrorterror. You know, again.”

“Yeah,” Dave nodded, feeling a little stupid as he shuffled over to stand next to Karkat, hands jammed in his pockets. “Fuck.”

Karkat turned, and the look on his face almost made Dave drop to his knees. Karkat’s eyes were round, brimming with translucent red tears, his lips trembling. It was like the moment he’d seen Dave step into the room he’d finally let himself feel something, and Dave’s breath hitched. He wanted to stop the movement of the entire world to make Karkat smile again, to stop him from feeling so much pain, guilt, regret.

Dave sat down on the arm of the chair, which was lumpy and sagging, but it put him close enough to Karkat to slip and arm around the troll’s shoulder. Karkat leaned into him hard, resting his head against Dave’s side and causing one of his horns to dig into Dave’s ribs. He didn’t care though. Karkat needed this, badly, and Dave wasn’t afraid to be there for him. Not when the stakes were this high.

Karkat’s tears began to fall, leaving little warm spots on Dave’s pants, and Dave shifted a little, getting more comfortable so he could be something sturdy for Karkat to lean on, something solid. He kept his arm around the troll’s shoulder, feeling the warmth of his body against his own, and the two of them sat in silence for a while, watching Gamzee’s monitors beep with a slow, pulsing heartbeat, while Karkat finally let himself cry.

“I _felt_ him die,” Karkat mumbled into Dave’s side, his voice strained and hoarse. “At least I thought I did.”

Dave hummed a little, hoping the sound was soothing. “You were about to die yourself at the time, between that and getting ripped out of the Drift, you got a trauma times two combo.”

Karkat’s shoulders shook a little. “Two and a half sweeps,” he muttered. “Two and a half fucking sweeps of thinking he was fucking dead, and then he’s here.” He sniffed a little, wrapping his arm a bit tighter around Dave’s waist. “He’s been right here in front of my face all this goddamned time.”

Dave squeezed his shoulder gently. “Hey, you had no way of knowing he’d survived,” he said. “For anyone to walk away from being Kaiju kibble is fucking unheard of.”

“It shouldn’t have surprised me though,” Karkat replied, his tone almost bitter. “Gamzee’s always been a fucking survivor, I shouldn’t have believed he was dead until I had my arms around his lifeless bloated fucking corpse.”

Dave nodded. “Gross,” he commented, and cracked a smile as Karkat leaned on him a little harder so his horn dug into Dave’s abdomen. “Ow,” he muttered, deadpan.

“Now he’s the leader of an International fucking Crime Syndicate,” Karkat muttered. “Shit, he’s the Mirthful Messiah, the guy who built his reputation on cold-blooded murder and ruthless violence. I always knew he was capable of that, fuck, some shit really is in the blood, but …” he trailed off, staring at the still form in the bed. “It’s like I don’t even recognize him any more.”

“He was never sober enough to get violent towards anyone,” Dave agreed, feeling Karkat’s pain in a visceral way, like a hot knife to his gut. “But even the earliest refugees had trouble getting their claws on sopor.”

Karkat nodded. He knew Dave got all of this from the Drift, but he didn’t seem to mind. Just days ago Dave’s observations would have been a gross invasion of privacy, but so much had changed. They had changed. “Being able to think clearly probably made it easier for him to feel that urge to kill,” he said, sounding a little sick.

Dave glanced down, just able to see Karkat’s face through his tangle of hair resting against Dave’s side. He knew what Karkat was thinking. “You’re afraid there isn’t any of the Gamzee you knew left in him,” he said, cautious yet matter of fact. If felt like the two of them spent a lot of time stating the obvious these days.

“I don’t know how there can be,” Karkat said, sitting up a little, just enough that his head’s no longer jammed into Dave’s side but his arm was still slung over the troll’s shoulders. “I’ve never actually seen Gamzee sober outside of the Drift, he was always on something when we fought. I knew he needed to stay calm, because tapping into that shit’s dangerous, it’s what the Subjuggulators who fight for the Condesce do.” He shuddered. “Like the human Hulk character but more purple blood and face paint and backs being snapped in half during a rage fit. I saw a purpleblooded pilot try Drifting when he was berserking and his co-pilot actually went insane and died.” He shook his head. “It was fucked up.”

Dave shuddered too, pulling Karkat a little closer beside him so the troll’s head was resting on his shoulder. It was almost funny how much had changed since the two of them had talked earlier. A subtle paradigm shift, a comfort level that hadn’t existed before, like the voicing of their truths had opened them up to what had lurked beneath the surface.

They both sighed, settling into the sitting position more comfortably, one of Karkat’s hands reaching out to take Dave’s hand out of his lap, gently intertwining their fingers. It was intimate, a kind of closeness that should fill Dave with terror, not an electric thrill rushing up and down his veins, a searing warmth in his chest.

“You’ve changed a lot in the last five years too, you know,” Dave said, finally, his voice low. “I mean, not into a mass murdering juggalo crime boss, but you’re not the Karkat Vantas you were when you came through the Breach.”

He shrugged, a slightly awkward gesture due to their proximity. “I don’t feel that different,” he said, his voice rough after crying. “I’m still a short angry asshole who’s only good at one thing.”

Dave snorted. “Short for a troll maybe,” he said. “Course, I’m short for a human dude, so you’re in good company.”

Karkat looked over at him. “Not denying the angry asshole part then?”

“What, you want me to lie to you?”

Karkat elbowed him in the ribs gently, making Dave huff out a little laugh. “Ass,” the troll mumbled, squeezing Dave’s hand tight enough for it to hurt a little. “Seriously though, I don’t see it, the fuck’s changed about me since I came to Earth? Sure, I don’t run the risk of getting my ass culled every time I turn a corner, and I made it through my adult molt, but otherwise I’m the same hotheaded shitlicker I was at ten sweeps. Nothing’s different.”

Dave was quiet for a moment, the thought that had immediately jumped to mind burning at the forefront of his brain before he could bring himself to say it. “... You’ve got me now,” he said, somehow managing to keep worst of the tenuous anxiety from his voice. “That’s pretty different.”

He felt Karkat tense up a little, but he didn’t pull away. “Yeah,” he said. “Guess that’s pretty fucking different.”

They fell silent once more, watching Gamzee sleeping in the hospital bed, the soft hum and beep of the monitors rhythmic, almost soothing. Dave shifted slightly in his seat so he could actually see Karkat’s face, take note of the way his eyes were half-focused on his unconscious friend, uncharacteristically distant, like he was lost in thought.

“Hey,” he said, making Karkat twitch slightly and glance over at him, anxious. “You can’t do anything till he wakes up. He’ll be out for a while, right?”

Karkat nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Jane said it may be a couple of days.”

“You gonna sit here that whole time flagellating yourself?” Dave quirked an eyebrow.

Karkat narrowed his eyes at his co-pilot. “Unless there’s another attack? Probably.”

Dave snorted, then shifted, making Karkat sit up. “Come on,” he said, standing slowly. He hadn’t let go of Karkat’s hand. “Jane’ll call you on the comms when he wakes up, you should eat something.”

“Jegus,” Karkat grumbled. “Are you my co-pilot or my fucking lusus?”

Dave smirked. “Dang Karkat, didn’t know you had a daddy kink.”

Karkat sputtered a bit as he stood up, only keeping his voice down because they were in the infirmary. “For fuck’s sake,” he hissed through clenched teeth, his grip on Dave’s hand tightening. “Are you seriously gonna make pail jokes when we’re in the room with my half-dead ex-moirail lying in a fucking hospital bed?”

Dave pulled his shades down so he could stare Karkat right in the eye, his expression suddenly deadly serious. “Karkat,” he said, his tone urgent, like he was delivering a lecture instead of having a conversation. “I want you to know, that no matter where we are, no matter what circumstance, I will _always_ be ready to make pail jokes.”

Karkat looked almost like he was going to enact some kind of violence on Dave for his comment, but the troll simply began walking towards the door, half-dragging Dave behind him because their hands were still clasped. It felt utterly normal for them to leave the room hand-in-hand, step into the hallway and pause to look through the window. Dave saw his co-pilot look at Gamzee with a pained expression, one full of regret and conflict, of relief that his former moirail was alive, of guilt for not searching for him, of apprehension for how much had changed in the last five years.

“Hey,” he said again, squeezing Karkat’s hand, the troll’s eyes flicking away from the hospital bed to focus on him. “Once he wakes up, you two can talk. I can be there if you need me.” He felt his face redden. “Or, you know, whatever.”

Karkat’s lips twitched into a smile, his skin also flushing slightly. Dave felt ridiculous, it was like they were teenagers, awkward and fumbling, unsure of their emotions and their ability to express them. They were still holding hands.

“Thanks,” Karkat said, and Dave finally noticed how close the two of them were standing, shoulders almost touching, the troll’s head tilted down slightly as he scrutinized the human, eyes still slightly glazed with translucent red tears. Karkat let out a little sigh and Dave could feel the troll’s breath on his cheek, warm, see his lips tremble.

Dave swallowed, his lips parting. “Karkat?” he asked, his voice barely rising above a whisper, husky and strained.

“Yeah?”

When Karkat looked at him Dave almost felt that his co-pilot knew what he was going to ask, and even though his heart was pounding, his skin feeling too tight for his body, he felt like everything was burning and alight with something he had never felt before.

“Is…” he swallowed again, clearing his throat, and tilted his head up slightly, inches between them. “Is it okay if I…?” He couldn’t get the words out, but it was only because he felt like he was about to spontaneously combust.

Dave saw Karkat’s eyes swell, grow round with a kind of wonder, even gratitude. He recognized what it meant for Dave to even attempt to ask, to even try to express that this was something he wanted, that Karkat was someone he wanted.

He didn’t speak either, just gave Dave the briefest of nods, and before Dave could try to speak again, Karkat dipped his head down, letting out the smallest of sighs before their lips met.

Their first kiss had been on the spur of the moment, fueled by adrenaline and relief, a surprised celebration, an admission of something they both feared. This kiss was different, and Dave could feel the shift immediately, the warmth of Karkat’s mouth on his now comforting, reassuring, right. Their finger were still intertwined, but Dave felt Karkat’s free hand reach up to gently touch his face, carefully, like he thought the human was a fragile figment, something that would vanish the moment he got too close, pushed too hard.

Dave rested his other hand against Karkat’s chest and deepened the kiss, carefully navigating around teeth to find his co-pilot’s tongue and sharply inhaling, wanting to pull him closer and prove that this was real, that he wouldn’t break or vanish at Karkat’s touch.

His fears were gone, his doubts obliterated. The words of his dead brother had been purged from his mind, long departed and obsolete. Dave felt the gentle rumbling in Karkat’s chest begin, a soothing cicada chirr, and his heart felt full.

He hadn’t known what to call this feeling before, but as he and Karkat kissed, gentle and sweet and exploratory, he knew what it was, felt it in his bones, resonant and powerful.

He kissed Karkat, and Dave felt like he was finally free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, they kiss, it's only been what, months of reading this fic? 
> 
> Thanks to everybody again for your comments and kudos, posting this fic and getting your responses has given me a fantastic boost during this first semester of my PhD. I'm officially through my extensive backlog, but I just turned in my last final project yesterday, so my holidays will be spent writing, eating too much food, and watching Pacific Rim over and over. 
> 
> Thank you all again, and I hope you enjoyed. Shit's getting real!


	17. It’s All Decided For Us

_There’s no time for us,_   
_There’s no place for us,_   
_What is this thing that builds our dreams, yet slips away from us._

_Who wants to live forever,_  
 _Who wants to live forever…?_  
 _There’s no chance for us,_  
 _It’s all decided for us,_  
 _This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us._  
\-- From ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ by Queen  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TsOPjZEF6E))  
__

Karkat hadn’t expected the kiss to go on this long, had anticipated a hesitant peck, something chaste and careful, more tentative and exploratory than anything.

Then Dave had slipped his tongue into Karkat’s mouth and Karkat had promptly forgotten how to breathe.

Parts of his thinkpan attempted to make contact as Dave deepened the kiss, reminding Karkat that the two of them were just getting to know each other, that he was still trying to figure out what it meant to blur the quadrant system, that Dave was working through his human sexuality hang-ups. It reminded him that they had only met days ago, that they were in a profession with the highest mortality rate on Earth, that they were standing in a public hallway outside the infirmary.

Dave’s arms wound around Karkat’s neck and his teeth grazed Karkat’s bottom lip, blunt but somehow still sending jolts of desire through Karkat’s body. He pulled Dave a little closer, gentle so his claws didn’t tear Dave’s fatigues, and told his mind in no uncertain terms to fuck right off.

He was struck again by how fragile humans were, and it was a more visceral perspective as he actually felt Dave’s lips soft against his own, held him close with his arms tight around his waist like he weighed almost nothing. Dave tasted like cigarettes and smelled like sweet coconuts and clay, felt warm but not hot, and he sounded alive as he gasped quietly, awake, like physical contact had kindled a fire in him, brought him out of a strange reverie. Karkat knew how that felt; he’d been in the same state of dreaming wakefulness up until he’d stepped back into the Shatterdome.

The two of them had been lost for years, Karkat could see that now, feel that, and as he broke the kiss he looked at Dave and felt the same thing that had filled his chest with curling warmth when he had returned to the Shatterdome, when he had been fighting in _Prometheus_.

It felt like coming home.

A smile ghosted over Dave’s face. “Y’keep lookin’ at me like I’m gonna crack or somethin’,” he said, his vowels elongating and the ends of his words vanishing in their wake. “I’m not made of glass, Karkat.”

Karkat snorted. “I know that,” he said, a little defensive. “We took down two fucking horrorterrors together. Sure we were in a Jaeger, but nobody who can do that’s made of anything but fucking steel.”

“Exactly.” Dave took a step towards Karkat, making him counter and back up until he was leaning against the wall. His shades had slid down his nose and Karkat could see his eyes, deep red and shining, his voice breathy and full of something the troll barely recognized coming from Dave Strider. He wanted this. Wanted Karkat. “So stop acting like you’re gonna fuckin’ break me, damn it.”

Karkat began to voice a protest, but his words were swallowed up by Dave kissing him again, this time with a kind of ferocity and neediness that caught Karkat by surprise. He responded eagerly, his mind now wandering to moments of fantasy, dreamscapes and night visions involving his co-pilot’s hands entwined in his, their mouths pressed together, the tearing of clothes and the imaginary ruminations of what Dave sounded like when Karkat touched him…

Dave let out the softest of moans as Karkat slid a hand up to his jaw, thumbclaw brushing lightly along his cheek, the other hand pressed into the small of his back, holding him close. He could feel Dave’s heart pounding through his jacket, hear his breath hitching as he leaned heavily into Karkat, tongue running along the troll’s bottom lip and hands beginning to wander along his chest, grazing his stomach, sliding up under his shirt.

“Hey,” Dave whispered as they paused for breath, Karkat’s hand having begun an expedition south of Dave’s belt towards the curve of his ass. His co-pilot sounded almost as if he’d just been sprinting, his eyes glassy with pupils dilated. “D’you wanna…” he swallowed, fingers tracing a pattern across Karkat’s chest under his shirt. “Continue this… line of inquiry… somewhere a little less public?”

Karkat let out a quiet laugh, his eyebrows quirking. “Line of inquiry? The fuck is this, a scientific investigation of interspecies attraction?”

“Roxy’d love that,” Dave’s voice was low and made Karkat’s lips hum as he spoke against them. “We should write up a report about the intricacies of troll-human sloppy makeouts after we’re done, it’ll be great.”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll stop this right here,” Karkat muttered, pausing to press his lips to Dave’s again and feel that electric thrill of contact whisper through him. “You can find another co-pilot to have interspecies makeouts with.”

“Dang,” Dave laughed, his voice still honey smooth, still full of implications Karkat barely dreamed to consider. “Haven’t even gotten you into bed with me and I’m already being relegated to the couch. This might be a record.”

“You really never shut up, do you?” Karkat’s voice was mostly exasperated growl as he spoke, but it faded as he realized he now had the perfect means to get Dave to stop talking. He kissed Dave again, and his co-pilot was happy to remain silent and put his mouth to more productive use. Karkat thought about Dave’s previous choice of words and felt the heat in his stomach move lower, cause movement within his fatigues that made him break the kiss abruptly, take one of Dave’s hands in his.

“Y’alright?” Dave asked, confused and still breathless.

“We should go… continue the line of inquiry,” Karkat said, knowing his cheeks were flushed, his exposed skin tinted with the red of his blood. For once he didn’t feel sick at the thought. “Somewhere else. Before…” he trailed off, trying to decide if there was any tactful way to say ‘before I ravish you up against this wall’, but the look on Dave’s face told him he didn’t need to voice the thought. Dave clearly got the message.

“Well,” Dave’s smile flashed into a wicked little grin, making Karkat’s insides liquefy just a bit. “Your place or mine?”

Karkat scowled. “Have you ever tried to have sex in a recuperacoon, Strider? It’s not exactly romantic.”

Dave’s eyebrows went up, suddenly flustered. Like he hadn’t been expecting Karkat to mention romance. “Well…” he gave a shrug with one shoulder. “If it’s romance you’re after, I’d say my bunk’s as good a place as any for us to go.”

“I mean,” Karkat suddenly felt nervous. “If you’re not looking for romantic, I mean, that’s…” he sighed, he was making an idiot of himself. “Fuck, I’ll shut up.”

The look Dave gave Karkat over the top of his shades spoke louder than any words either of them could muster, and Karkat felt like every nerve in his body suddenly lit up as he met his co-pilot’s eyes. It was as clear as if he’d just shouted it and woken every sleeping patient in the medical wing.

_It’s you. Why the fuck wouldn’t I be looking for romantic?_

Karkat sucked in a breath and took Dave’s hand in his again, squeezing gently. He felt like every cell in his body was vibrating with anticipation of what was going to happen next.

“C’mon,” Dave took a step back so Karkat didn’t have to stay up against the wall, keeping their hands linked, fingers intertwined. “Let’s get out of here.”

They didn’t speak as they headed down the hallway towards the elevator, hands still joined, both of them still flushed and slightly out of breath. Karkat could only think of one comparable moment to what he currently felt, and that was the thrill of fighting in _Prometheus_ , the exhilaration of beating back the horrorterrors.

Dave had been by his side then too, and that just convinced Karkat all the more that the two of them were moving exactly as fast as they should be.

They reached the elevator and Karkat pressed the call button as Dave glanced up and down the hallway, clearly wishing everyone currently passing through the medical wing would suddenly vanish. His fingers curled a little bit, squeezing Karkat’s hand, and he gulped a little, trying not to make eye contact. Karkat was having trouble keeping it together as it was, getting another look at Dave’s eyes boring into his soul as he peered over the edges of his glasses would lead to an incident of public indecency, there was no question.

Karkat couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted someone this much. He wasn’t sure he ever had. It was like every nerve in his body was alive and shrieking, begging the elevator to arrive faster, for time to speed up and take them to Dave’s bunk, to Karkat slamming him against the wall, fumbling to undress him, touch him, explore every inch of him, hearing the sound of Dave’s breath catching in his throat as Karkat captured his mouth once again-

He heard Dave gasp quietly beside him and Karkat realized he had been squeezing his co-pilot’s hand while he’d let his thoughts consume him, and he blushed. “Sorry,” he mumbled, loosening his grip.

Dave let out a little cough and Karkat felt his co-pilot’s fingers tighten as they intertwined with his all the more securely. “S’alright,” Dave whispered. “I… I don’t mind.”

Karkat gave in and turned his head slightly to look at Dave, whose flushed face and slightly parted lips made the heat in Karkat’s stomach suddenly move towards volcanic, and they both sighed with relief as the elevator let out a quiet chiming sound, the doors sliding open.

And then almost collided with Deputy Marshal Dirk Strider as he stepped out into the medical wing.

“Good, you’re still here,” Dirk either didn’t notice the way the two of them suddenly jerked apart, practically leaping to opposite sides of the corridor, or he didn’t care. “I was just about to get you both on comms.”

“What’s up?” Dave asked, but Dirk didn’t need to answer as he was closely followed by Roxy and Eridan, both of whom looking a little worse for wear. “Holy shit, Rox.”

“Hey bro,” Roxy’s hair was matted from sweat and her nose was dripping blood. “Guess every Strilonde’s been in a real Drift now, huh?”

“Honestly,” Eridan’s entire face was dripping purple and he was leaning hard on Roxy’s shoulder. “I have a new level of respect for any troll who’s ever had to Drift with a Lalonde, remind me to shake Kanaya’s hand when next I see her.” He was clearly dazed, his words slurring together.

“Get Jane,” Dirk said to Dave, who sprinted off down the hall immediately. The elder Strider raised a hand to his ear, speaking into his comm. “I need all pilots to LOCCENT control immediately, code red, we don’t have much time.”

“What’s going on?” Karkat tried to get Dirk to slow down, but to no avail: the Deputy Marshal was storming down the hallway towards the stairs. “What happened? Did the test work?”

“And then some,” Dirk said, his tone grim. “Get Dave and get up to LOCCENT, I’ll explain there.”

“Yessir,” Karkat slowed his steps and the Deputy Marshal left him behind, footsteps echoing down the hallway. Over the comm. Karkat heard John Egbert’s voice echo through the medical wing and presumably the rest of the Shatterdome, calling all Pilots to LOCCENT immediately. The lights lining the ceiling began to flash like sirens and Karkat felt his body flood with adrenaline, mind racing as he wondered just what Roxy and Eridan had seen in their Drift with the Kaiju baby.

Whatever it was, Dirk’s urgency indicated it was nothing good.

Dave emerged from one of the examination rooms, having left Roxy and Eridan behind with Jane to get their vitals checked, and his expression was as fraught as Karkat’s own. “What’d Dirk say?” he asked as he and Karkat fell into step, heading for the stairs. “Rox and Eridan are fifty kinds of fucked up, alarms are going off, the fuckin’ sky is falling, what happened?”

“No clue,” Karkat replied, both of them running up the creaking metal stairs. “Guess he wants to tell us all at once.” He coughed out a laugh. “So much for nepotism.”

Dave snorted. “Two Kaiju kills and a cockblock and suddenly you’re part of the family, Karkat?”

Karkat rolled his eyes, but he felt his cheeks turn red. “I was talking about you and Roxy, fuckhead,” he growled, but he knew it was a weak excuse.

“Okay,” Dave replied, out of breath from their jog up the stairs. “Sounds fake but okay.”

“Fuck you,” Karkat shot back as they rounded the corner towards the atrium.

“ _After_ the life or death situation, Karkat,” Dave said, and Karkat could hear the smirk in his voice. “Shit just got real, no time for Strider-lovin’ anytime soon.”

“Why in the name of any listening god am I attracted to you?” Karkat growled, but Dave just laughed harder in response, knowing as well as Karkat did that the answer to that question was more complicated than either of them could truly fathom.

Most of the other pilots had already arrived in the control room by the time Karkat and Dave had fought their way through crowds of concerned engineers and maintenance staff in the atrium. Rose and Kanaya still looked a bit worse for wear after their part in the double event, both of them bruised and clearly exhausted. Jade and Feferi looked a little better, but only in terms of physical damage as opposed to sleeplessness. Only Equius and Nepeta looked their usual selves, the latter practically bouncing around the room while the former stood tense and somber, watching the monitors at the front of the room with clear concern.

“Hey,” Dave immediately crossed the room to stand by Rose, who gave him a quick hug before turning back to watch Dirk, who was pacing at the front of the room as Marshal Egbert spoke softly with Sollux.

“Hi,” she responded, not facing him but giving Karkat a nod, which he returned. “Is Roxy all right?”

“Bleedin’ from the nose,” Dave said. “Eridan too. Jane’s patching them up.”

“I do hope they’re alright,” Kanaya frowned. “I assume their experiment was a success?”

“We don’t know,” Karkat waved a hand towards the front of the room. “Dirk wanted everyone to gather before he said anything.”

“Roxy didn’t say anything to you?” Rose asked.

Dave shook his head. “She asked me for a martini and Eridan almost threw up on my boots. They’re too fucked up to say much of anything right now. Guess doing the mind-meld with a horrorterror’s a shitstorm, even with a shared neural bridge.”

“Well, they clearly managed to share enough information with Dirk for him to summon us here,” Rose noted, and Karkat noticed her find Kanaya’s hand and give it a little squeeze. “I only hope whatever it is they saw is something we can handle.”

Karkat turned away from the conversation at the sound of footsteps, Terezi and Vriska arriving as Marshal Egbert stepped away from Sollux and leaned over to address his deputy. “Finally,” Vriska said, loud enough for the other pilots to hear but still soft enough that the Marshal was out of earshot. “Some action.”

Karkat scowled at her, receiving a look of contempt in return, but before either of them could get into another shouting match Marshal Egbert cleared his throat, making everyone fall silent.

“Mister Captor, if you could pull up the scans?” the Marshal’s voice was calm but full of authority, purposeful and determined.

“Thir,” Sollux confirmed, and the screens behind him shifted until they all displayed the same thing: a constructed image of the Breach. On the table in front of him, a projected 3D model appeared, displaying a rendering of the gaping trench on the ocean floor. As Karkat and the others watched, two massive Kaiju emerged and began to swim lazily in a clockwise formation around the open rift. They were at least the size of the two Kaiju Dave and Karkat had taken down during the double event, and the readouts on the screens confirmed it: they were both Category 4s.

“Jesus,” Dave muttered, leaning over the table, his face twisted into a grimace. “Talk about ‘send in the clowns’.”

Karkat couldn’t argue. Both of the horrorterrors bore an unsettling resemblance to clown characters, the larger one’s head resembling a pointed hood and ruffled collar, its mouth wide in a rictus of a smile. The smaller one’s head almost looked like a starfish, its face encircled with fins that looked a bit like flower petals, its grin equally unsettling. As Karkat looked closer, he noticed that the finned Kaiju’s left arm ended in what looked like a little jester puppet, which smirked vacantly through the dim light emanating from the Breach. Karkat grit his teeth. He’d seen horrorterrors before, but these were truly the stuff of nightmares.

“New movement in the Breach,” Marshal Egbert said, his voice still calm and controlled. “Two signatures registered emerging within the last twenty minutes, both Category 4. Codenames Pierrot and Falstaff.”

“Rather than engaging in the usual pattern of swimming towards the coast, these Kaiju are circling the Breach,” Dirk continued, pointing at the projected model for emphasis. “According to the data the science team collected, they appear to be protecting it.”

“‘Data the science team collected’?” Vriska repeated, her tone incredulous. “You mean the part where the two brightest minds in the Shatterdome went fucking insane and decided it would be a good idea to share brainwaves with a baby horrorterror?”

“Ranger,” Marshal Egbert gave Vriska a piercing look, causing her to fall silent, scowl still on her face. “As the Deputy Marshal said, the two Kaiju are circling the entrance to the breach, and we can only assume that they are protecting whatever else is going to make its way through.”

“What is it?” Karkat asked, nerves and adrenaline fueling his anxiety. “What’s on the other side?”

A clamor of voices suddenly erupted from the doorway at the back of the control room, and Karkat and the other pilots turned to see Roxy and Eridan barge through the gathering crowd, both of them looking as bad as they had down in the medical wing. He could see Jane a few feet behind them, looking furious. Clearly they were up and about against medical advisement.

“Marshal!” Jane yelled over the heads of the other occupants in the room. “Really, I must insist Roxy and Eridan return to medical, I still need to run more tests, they’re both suffering from severe internal injuries!”

“Janey, we’re fine!” Roxy waved her hand dismissively behind her in Jane’s direction. “We have to tell everyone what we saw!”

“Rox, the Marshal and I can explain it,” Dirk said, now visibly concerned for his sister’s wellbeing. “You need to recover.”

“Nah fuck that,” she crossed the control room to stand in front of the projection table. “Better to get it straight from the hoofbeast’s mouth.” She slammed her palms down on the table, fingers going through the projected Kaiju. “And the hoofbeast says we’re totally fucked, guys, just completely and utterly boned.”

“She’s right,” Eridan said, and the fact that he agreed with Roxy Lalonde of all people shocked the entirety of LOCCENT into silence. “What we saw is truly a portent of our doom.”

“I’d give him shit for being dramatic but that’s seriously the best descriptor for this situation,” Roxy continued. Karkat recognized their speech pattern, picking up each other’s sentences and maintaining trains of thought between them. Drift compatibility was a strange and unexpected thing. “The shit has hit the whirling device and we are boned, do not pass go, do not collect a billion boonbucks, we have to act now.”

“Roxy,” Dirk stepped forward, putting a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Breathe. Explain. Tell them what you told me.”

“Oh I will,” Roxy nodded vigorously, throwing her hands up in the air. Blood still dripped from her nose. “And then some, because this is it, kids, this is the showstopper, the final boss, the end of times, the apocalypse, shit is getting REAL.”

“Jegus, are you allergic to coherence?” Vriska snapped. “If it’s so fucking urgent maybe you should tell us what’s going on?”

“She’s coming is what,” Eridan said, running a hand through his hair, his forehead damp with panicked sweat. “She’s finally ready to come through the Breach and lay waste to humanity. Those horrorterrors are guarding the rift to make way for her flagship.”

Silence boomed in the control room at the scientist’s outburst. Karkat felt like his entire digestion sac had been turned inside out, and he felt Dave stiffen next to him, eyes wide behind his shades. The other pilots bore similar expressions, the trolls especially looking like they had just woken from a dream to find themselves in a nightmare.

Feferi finally broke the silence. “You mean…” she started, trailing off and then starting again after swallowing hard. “The Final Stage?”

Eridan nodded. “Her Imperious Condescension is ready to enact her master plan and invade Earth through the Breach.”

“This is why it’s been stabilizing and stronger horrorterrors have been coming through,” Roxy said, picking up where Eridan left off. “If she wants to send her ship through with all her monsters and troops and drones, the rift needs to be able to stay open long enough. So, Cat 4 beasties with evolutionary adaptability, a couple of big nasty guards to keep us away, and before you know it she’ll be rising up from the depths of the ocean to exterminate what’s left of the human pestilence.” Roxy looked around the room, her eyes wide with uncontained fear. “This is Game Over, y’all. We’re fucked.”

Eridan grimaced, but nodded. “Apocalypse is now, and the first thing She’s going to do is find the rebels who broke through the Breach to bring Drift technology to the human race and squash us like bugs. Then she’ll move on to the rest of the planet until there’s nothing left of humanity.”

“If that’s the case,” Dirk began, his voice cutting through the beginning of a rising murmur in the room, the concerned whispers and soft cries of the trolls in the room falling silent. “We have contingency plans for everything. We may have to resort to drastic measures.” His expression was stony. “We... may only have one option.”

The murmurs returned, buzzing around the room. Karkat exchanged an uneasy look with Dave, sure they were both thinking the same thing: how could they have a contingency plan for this?

Dirk looked at Marshal Egbert, and then at Eridan and Roxy, who crossed the room to stand by the holographic projection console. A moment passed, Eridan fiddling with the keyboard until the projection zoomed in to display the Breach itself. “The Breach has never been this stable before,” Eridan said, tapping buttons. “This is by design, as Her ship would be unable to come through an unstable rip in spacetime. This lack of stability is what has prevented us from bringing the fight to Her in addition to keeping the Kaiju attacks staggered across several sweeps, but this stability we see here presents an opportunity we had not previously considered.” Eridan paused, partially for dramatic effect and also clearly out of nerves. “We can collapse the Breach.”

Muttering rippled through the room, trolls and humans alike expressing shock, awe, concern. Behind him Karkat felt Kanaya lean heavily on Rose, and next to him Dave put a hand on his arm.

“What would that entail?” Dirk asked, expression inscrutable behind his shades, though his tone indicated he already knew the answer.

“We take a nuclear device,” Roxy said, giving Eridan a break. “We give it to one of the Jaegers and send out everybody else to distract the horrorterrors. While they’re giving the Clown Posse the runaround, the main team drops the bomb right into the gaping maw of the Breach, destabilizing the rift and collapsing it for good. It’s risky as fuck, and the survival rate’s pretty fucking grim, but it’s the only chance we have.”

“We have nukes?” Karkat heard Vriska mutter.

“We’re the Interspec program,” Terezi murmured back. “Last great hope for the universe with connections to every black market on the planet. We have everything.”

Dirk frowned. “So, nuclear device is armed, drops into rift, rift destabilizes, Breach closes?”

Roxy and Eridan nodded in unison. “Goodbye Batterwitch,” Roxy said. “She won’t be able to get through, human race saved, you win a combat.”

“So,” Feferi’s voice cut through the whispers and murmurs like a knife. “That cuts us off from Her side entirely, right?”

Eridan and Roxy exchanged looks. Marshal Egbert’s eyes darkened as he looked over at Dirk, whose mouth was now a grim line. They didn’t speak, and the murmurs rose once more.

“Sealing the rift,” Karkat murmured. “Permanently. Cutting Earth off from the Alternians entirely.”

Behind him Rose murmured in assent. “Leaving billions of trolls and other enslaved species at the mercy of the Condesce.”

“And trapping us here on Earth forever,” Kanaya finished. Karkat glanced over at her and she looked sickened, horrified. “Having failed our mission.”

Karkat had never seen Dirk or Marshal Egbert look so grave. When he spoke, the eldest Strider’s voice was full of a regret Karkat had never heard run so deep. “I am sorry.”

Silence echoed through the room for a second before every troll erupted into cries of outrage. Karkat felt like the ground was falling out from under him and he almost dropped to his knees, Dave catching him to keep him steady. He thought he was going to throw up, his entire body suddenly shaking. This couldn’t be happening, this wasn’t possible, there was no way they could do this.

“We can’t,” Feferi’s voice, normally soothing and bubbly, was blade-sharp and furious. “We CAN’T do this, it’s unconscionable, we came here to SAVE Alternia, not doom it!”

“Marshal this is wrong-”

“We have to fight-”

“-Can’t abandon our species-”

“-She’ll kill us all-”

“Please don’t do this!”

“ENOUGH,” Dirk yelled, his hands up in the air. “Everybody calm down.”

“How the fuck are we supposed to calm down?!” Karkat barely realized he had spoken until the whole room was suddenly looking in his direction. He took a few steps forward, hands clenched into fists, and he glared at the Marshal and his Deputy, entire body burning with a fury he had only ever felt when he was piloting a Jaeger. “You’re talking about abandoning the entire Troll race, here.”

Dirk stared at Karkat for a long moment, expression still grim. “We have no choice, Ranger Vantas,” he said. “This is the only way to save Earth.”

“Sure, save Earth,” Karkat snapped. It took him a few moments to notice that Dave wasn’t holding him back, and knowing that his co-pilot understood his rage only fueled it further. “And fuck over the species that stopped you from going extinct in the fucking first place? We came through the Breach five years ago to help you help us, to get reinforcements and FIGHT, not run away like cowards!”

Karkat felt a shadow pass to his right and he turned to see Feferi move to stand beside him. “Karkat’s right,” he said, and once again he was struck with the surreal sensation of standing next to the heir apparent to his entire species, the highest of the blood castes uniting with the lowest of the low. “I made a promise to my people, Marshal, and I can’t break it, we can’t abandon them, I know we looked at this as a last resort, but there HAS to be another way!”

“That’s enough-” Dirk said, but Karkat cut him off.

“You wouldn’t abandon humanity,” Karkat snapped, taking another step forward and brandishing a finger at Dirk across the projection table. “You can’t ask us to do this, these are our people, how DARE you-”

_“ENOUGH.”_ Karkat and Feferi were shocked into silence, Marshal Egbert’s raised voice something they had never actually heard before. The man stood, hands balled into fists and face pale, looking around the room at the mix of humans and trolls crowded into the control room, grim and sad. “Time has run out, Ranger Peixes. We simply have no choice.”

Feferi took a few steps back, Jade crossing to take her hand. Beside him Karkat felt Dave approach and do the same to him. Both he and Feferi looked at the Marshal like they had just been stabbed, and around the room the other pilots, troll and human alike, looked sick with the injustice of it all. Karkat glanced around and he could see all of them, skin pale grey with fear and helplessness. Sollux sat at his console looking like he was about to throw up, and behind him Equius and Nepeta stood together with Vriska and Terezi, all of them shocked into silence. Eridan looked horrified as he leaned on Roxy’s arm, both of them pale and dazed from blood loss. On the other side of the room Karkat could see Rose actively supporting Kanaya to stop her from collapsing. Other trolls he barely new, engineers and comm officers and soldiers and mechanics, stared at him hopelessly, like the spark of resistance had finally been snuffed out.

The Resistance. The band of rebels and misfits crazy enough to take on the Condesce herself. They had all been in this fight together for sweeps now, high and lowbloods alike, defying their entire world order to try and make a difference as they led a rebellion across space and time. To try and save what was left of their world, to help one of the only species with the means of fighting the oppression they faced.

He was Karkat Vantas, the mutant rebel, who should have been culled before he had even pupated, who came back to the fight after giving up hope and Drifted with a human to save his species.

All for nothing.

Karkat took Dave’s hand and looked over at his co-pilot, whose face mirrored the expression of all the trolls in the room. He turned to his right and saw Feferi regarding him with an expression he had never expected to see from anyone, let alone the Heiress of the Alternian Empire.

Respect.

He took in a breath and leveled his gaze at the Marshal, then at Dirk, and when he spoke his voice echoed through the entire control room, clear and loud, resonating as if he were speaking for every troll in the room, voicing the betrayal all of them felt.

“We trusted you.”

Karkat saw Dirk’s jaw clench, and the Deputy Marshal took a deep breath and removed his pointed sunglasses. His eyes were sunset orange, and even across the table Karkat could see that they were full of a near-indescribable guilt. “I know.”

Karkat felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. “Fuck you,” he practically spat. “You can’t know.”

Dirk flinched, visibly, as if Karkat had slapped him. “We’re doing this so we don’t have to know,” he said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Don’t expect any of us to understand.” Dave’s voice was unexpected, as sharp and cold as Karkat’s had been, and Karkat turned to see his co-pilot glaring at his older brother, furious. “Nothing about this is right and you know it.”

Dirk sucked in a breath through his nose and studied his younger brother for a long moment before returning his shades to his nose. “This is war,” he said, voice toneless. “And we will do what it takes to survive. I’m sorry.”

Dave set his jaw, removing his own shades, red eyes piercing through his brother’s stony exterior. He spoke softly, loud enough for only Dirk and Karkat to hear. “... And here I thought you weren’t like _him_.”

Dirk’s entire expression twinged violently, and Karkat could swear he saw the Deputy Marshal’s exterior crack and crumble at the edges. Dave couldn’t have hurt him more if he’d run a sword through his chest. The two brothers stared at each other for a long moment, the tension between them electric and taut, until Dave finally relented, putting his shades on and turning his back to his brother, pulling Karkat with him.

“Dave,” Rose whispered, slipping an arm around her brother’s shoulder.

“Don’t,” he mumbled, shoving one hand into his pocket while the other stayed tight in Karkat’s grip. His voice was thick with tears. “Just, don’t.”

Karkat looked back at Dirk, saw the Deputy Marshal’s expression, and his heart felt like it was being squeezed out of his chest. He’d thought he’d lost everything that day in Alaska, but it was nothing compared to the pain on Dirk’s face, the abject failure that was etched into his features.

Karkat stood up a little straighter, turning to address Marshal Egbert. “... We’re Interspec Rangers, sir,” he said. “Awaiting orders.”

Dirk took a few steps back, jaw tight, and he nodded to Marshal Egbert, who stepped up to address them all. “I’m sending out the heavy hitters,” he said. “ _Pounce_ , run interference and distract the Kaiju. _Surrender Dorothy_ will take the nuclear device to the Breach and drop it through. _Law and Order_ , you’re on standby. All teams report to the Shatterdome Bay for preparations.” The Marshal looked around the room one last time, his gaze settling on Feferi, whose eyes brimmed with fuchsia tears. “... I am truly sorry.”

Feferi gave the Marshal a nod, though she looked defeated. “... We do what we must, for the good of our people,” she said. “I... understand.”

The Marshal nodded back. “All dismissed,” he said. “Prepare to drop.”

The crowd maintained its dead silence as the Marshal and Dirk turned away to examine the readouts on Sollux’s screen. Equius and Nepeta followed Jade and Feferi out of the control room, all four of them pale and drawn at the gravity of their task, and all the more sick over the necessity of it.

As the room emptied, Karkat felt Dave’s hand tighten in his own, and he turned to look at his co-pilot, expression clear even through his dark eyewear. “Karkat,” Dave whispered, and Karkat could see a tear creeping down his cheek. “I’m… so sorry.”

Karkat made as if to speak, but the words caught in his throat. He let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and slumped forward, Dave catching him in a hug. Behind them, Rose comforted Kanaya in a similar fashion, and Karkat let his co-pilot comfort him as he thought about the failure of the resistance, of the pain and the fear, and he cried, staining the shoulders of Dave’s fatigues red.

As he watched his fellow rebels trail out of the room over Dave’s shoulder, Karkat Vantas had never felt so powerless in his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to scream at me in the comments section below. OUO. 
> 
> Seriously though thank you all so much for reading and leaving comments and kudos, I don't have the chance to respond most of the time but I swear I appreciate all of your comments so much. We're getting down to the BIG SHIT now, so tune in next thursday to find out what happens :)


	18. Soulmates Never Die

_The sea’s evaporating_   
_Though it comes as no surprise_   
_These clouds we’re seeing_   
_They’re explosions in the sky_   
_It seems it’s written_   
_But we can’t read between the line_

_Hush_  
 _It’s okay_  
 _Dry your eye_  
 _Dry your eye_  
 _Soulmate dry your eye_  
 _Dry your eye_  
 _Soulmate dry your eye_  
 _‘Cause soulmates never die_  
\-- From ‘Soulmates’ by Placebo  
([x](https://youtu.be/Tjysa_7sZr4))  
__

It took a good twenty minutes for Karkat to stop crying, and Dave couldn’t blame him in the slightest. They’d left the chaos of LOCCENT behind, sitting on the floor in the atrium under the clock, their backs against the cold metal of the wall. Karkat’s shoulders shook as he leaned hard against Dave, who comforted him as best he could. They both stared straight ahead for a while, unspeaking, as they heard Hal’s automated announcements echo over the loudspeaker as _Pounce_ and _Surrender Dorothy_ were deployed.

“It’s just fucked,” Karkat muttered, once he’d finally stopped crying. “All of this. I can’t even, just, fucking…” He trailed off, turning and pushing his face into Dave’s shoulder with a sniff. Dave thought about how the contact would have been upsetting, even repellant to him, just hours ago. The impending act of genocide - because that’s what it was, however they tried to spin it - had left the both of them a lot less concerned with being openly affectionate with each other and more interested in doing whatever it took to survive.

“Yeah,” Dave managed, unable to think of anything else to say. “Desperate times is one thing, but this?”

“It’s xenocide,” Karkat said, his voice muffled by Dave’s shoulder. “That’s what we’re doing. Sure, we’re not actively wiping out the entire Alternian race, but sealing the Breach to trap Her on the other side? We’re dooming every troll who didn’t come through during the Assault.” He sat up a little, looking at Dave with a hopeless fear in his eyes. “That’s it for my species, Dave. We’re gonna fucking go extinct.”

Dave looked him over, the pain in his heart so sharp he could almost taste it, metallic and cold on his tongue. He found Karkat’s hand and squeezed it tight, wishing he could do more. “Sacrifice in times of war shouldn’t be like this,” he muttered, stomach still twisted with rage over his and Dirk’s heated exchange in LOCCENT. “I get that we all gotta make hard choices and shit for the greater good, but there’s got to be something we can do that isn’t this.”

Dave could feel Karkat’s eyes on him, concerned. “... What you said to Dirk…” he began, then trailed off.

“I’m a fuckin’ asshole,” Dave said, shrugging one shoulder. “No other way to spin it.”

“I mean,” Karkat squeezed his hand. “You weren’t wrong.”

“Doesn’t mean it was right to say it,” Dave replied, feeling the knots in his stomach tighten. “Could’ve handled it better.”

“Pretty sure the Marshal could be handling the fate of my species better,” Karkat responded, scowling. “It was harsh, but fuck if it wasn’t justified.”

Dave frowned a bit, staring blankly at the floor. “Don’t think anything justifies tellin’ your brother he’s just like the abusive shitwad who raised you. Even if he is leading the charge to doom an entire species to slavery and gruesome death.”

They were both silent for a moment, until Karkat shrugged. “I mean, if it takes that kind of mass murder to compare Dirk to your dead oldest brother, that’s still a pretty high bar.”

Dave snorted. “I guess. ‘Hey Dirk, the only way you could fuck up as bad as Dean is if you sign off on Actual Fucking Genocide, congratulations’.”

Karkat snorted too. “Pretty sure a high bar like that is something you should walk under, not do an acrobatic fucking pirouette off of into a sea of unspeakable acts.”

Dave felt the tension slowly creep out of him at Karkat’s turn of phrase. It never failed to entertain him that the troll had picked up the Striderian word salad tendencies from their Drift. He squeezed Karkat’s hand again. “It’s something he’ll have to live with,” he said. “Another thing to add to his Kilimanjaro of regrets.”

“To ours too,” Karkat said, tone suddenly sober. “It’s not like we’re doing anything to stop him, we’re just sitting here.”

Dave pressed his lips together, feeling a little sick. Karkat had a point, it wasn’t like they had done anything to stop the plan beyond yell at Dirk and call him a monster. “Funny how its easy to delude ourselves into believing we’re heroes,” he said. “Get in our giant robot and break heads, but at the end of the day we’re just as powerless as everyone else.”

Karkat sighed, leaning against Dave again. “Guess that’s why I stopped,” he said. “It’s easy to forget how fragile you are when you’re on the front line in a jaeger, all that power and adrenalin. The reminders are pretty fucking jarring when they happen.”

“No shit,” Dave said, knowing Karkat meant Gamzee, and that the pain of losing his old co-pilot was still there even if the guy had survived it.

“Still getting back in Prometheus though,” Karkat said, more for himself than for Dave it seemed.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Dave agreed. “If we don’t fight, who the fuck else is gonna do it?”

“Besides the pilots who are currently on their way to be dropped right in the fucking trench?”

“You know what I mean, asshole,” Dave nudged Karkat with his elbow, earning a nudge in return. “We’re pilots. We fight monsters for a living in monsters we built. It’s not something everyone can do.”

Karkat nodded, relenting a little as his scowl lessened. “And there are four pilots out there doing that right now while we’re moping like wigglers in the atrium.”

Dave was convinced his stomach was full of snakes at this point, it was the only way those knots could continue to shift and twist so readily. “... We should be in there,” he said finally. “I’ve been in LOCCENT for every drop both Pounce and Surrender Dorothy have made, better I don’t break my streak.”

Karkat huffed out a breath, agreeing. “If we’re gonna be accessories to mass destruction, we may as well take it on the fuckin’ chin and watch it happen, right?”

Dave winced, looking sharply at his co-pilot, whose expression was nondescript and numb. “Sorry,” he said. “We… don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”

“We’re co-pilots, Dave,” Karkat snapped. “If you wanna go support the others, that’s fine, I’ll come with. I just…” he trailed off, then got to his feet, letting go of Dave’s hand but standing within arm’s reach. “... need a minute.”

“It’s not like we’re conjoined, Karkat,” Dave replied, also standing up, his various bruises complaining. “I can always meet you when it’s over.”

Karkat shook his head, taking Dave’s hand again, firm and determined despite the situation. “No, fuck that,” he said. “Feferi can’t look away from it. Neither can Nepeta and Equius. I can be there for them at least.” He glanced at Dave. “And for you.”

Dave felt a warmth spread through him at Karkat’s words, the hopelessness of the situation somewhat alleviated by the knowledge that the two of them were together, both as pilots and as whatever it was they were still stumbling through. It was a comfort, and Dave was ready to take as many of those as he could get, for the both of them.

He was about to thank Karkat when the lights around them started to flash, alternating red and orange, and Dave felt adrenaline hit his system as the alarms began to wail. They exchanged a glance, all the blood draining out of Karkat’s face. Both of them knew that the alarms didn’t go unless something was wrong, really wrong, and as they turned and ran back towards LOCCENT Dave could hear Hal’s voice echoing through the atrium.

“ _Alert. Alert. Movement in Breach. Code Red. Movement in Breach._ Rosemary _prep for deployment_.”

They charged past the engineers and techs who were all scrambling to their stations, Dave swearing in every language he knew and a few he didn’t. Movement in the Breach meant another Kaiju was coming through, and Code Red?

“It’s a fucking Category Five,” Karkat gasped as they ran. “How in the _fuck_ is there a fucking Category Five?!”

“Come on,” Dave grabbed for Karkat’s hand and they half-ran, half hauled each other towards the control room. “We gotta get up there.”

LOCCENT was chaos. Sollux and John were both barking orders into their headsets in multiple languages while Roxy and Eridan argued vehemently with Dirk and Marshal Egbert about the misshapen mass slowly rising from the 3D rendering of the Breach. Dave pushed past the milling crowd of personnel to get a better look, practically bodyslamming himself into the edge of the table. Karkat did the same beside him and they both looked over at Dirk, who was stone-faced in front of a ranting Eridan.

“-can’t possibly expect me to calm down when what’s happening is precisely what I predicted!” the troll was yelling, gesticulating wildly. “A triple event! Unprecedented! We have no data for this, Marshal, we have no way to predict the actions of a Category Five horrorterror!”

“He’s right,” Roxy agreed from her spot next to one of the monitors where she was frantically typing into a console. “All we have is escalating data between the previous four categories, we have no idea what this thing is capable of, there’s no way they should engage it!” Dave wasn’t sure what was more unsettling, that his sister was sober or that she was consistently agreeing with Eridan.

“We don’t have a choice,” Marshal Egbert said, though his face was a mask of concern, even fear. Dave had never seen the Marshal look quite so shaken before. “They’ve already engaged Falstaff and Pierrot, any attempts to cease the operation could lead all three of the Kaiju back to the coastline.”

“Dropping the device with the Cat Five Kaiju that close to the breach is too dangerous!” Eridan said. “What if it knocks it back into the ocean? We’d be wiping out the entire Pacific Rim with the resulting tsunami!”

“ _Pounce_ and _Dorothy_ know what they’re doing,” Dirk replied, though his tone was not nearly as sure as his words. “Rosemary will distract the new Kaiju, if we need to we can send out _Prometheus_ to run interference.”

“With _Law and Order_ on the coastline,” the Marshal agreed. “The situation is under control, even if the circumstances have changed.” He looked across the control room at Sollux, who was swearing loudly in Alternian while adjusting settings on the monitor. “Status update, Mister Captor.”

“Category Five Kaiju exthiting the Breacth,” he said. “Codename ethtablithed ath Pillar of Faith, appearth to be guarding the rift.”

“‘Pillar of Faith’?” Dave repeated, squinting over at the monitor.

“Yeah,” Karkat nodded, pointing out the horrorterror’s most distinct features: a massive misshapen column of flesh atop its head and its tiny claw-like arms pressed together like it was a member of a gruesome church congregation. “Looks like it’s praying.”

“Here’s hoping that’s all it can do,” Dirk said, crossing the room to stand by Sollux’s console. “ _Pounce_ , _Dorothy_ , status update, what’s going on down there?”

Equius’s voice came over the comms, crackly and tinged with static. “LOCCENT, _Pounce_ engaging Kaiju now, preparing to run interference.”

“ _Surrender Dorothy_ in position,” Jade’s voice came over the comms too. Ready to launch device on your order, Control.”

“Commencing attack,” Equius said, and Dave could hear the proximity alarms blaring over the open comm, see the shift in the feed on the LOCCENT monitors, taking footage directly from the cockpit cams of _Pounce_ and _Dorothy_. As he and Karkat watched, the video lurched violently and the readouts on the screen beneath it spiked as Pounce slammed into the smaller of the two clown Kaiju, Pierrot, and the two went tumbling backwards onto the ocean floor. The jaeger anchored its claws in the Kaiju’s chest, throwing its other arm out to fire a rocket-propelled arrow at Falstaff, who turned away from Dorothy and began bearing down on _Pounce_.

“Yes!” Behind them Vriska and Terezi pumped their fists, cheering at _Pounce_ ’s attack. They were already suited up, and Dave wondered vaguely if he and Karkat should do the same. They all hoped that the three deployed jaegers would be more than enough to dispatch the enemy, but everything they knew to be true had been thrown out the window when Pillar of Faith had emerged from the Breach.

“Preparing launch sequence,” Feferi said over the comm. Dave could hear the pain in her voice, the reluctance, and his heart ached. Around them all the trolls fell silent, and most of the humans along with them, and Karkat’s hand found Dave’s to squeeze it tight. Dave couldn’t look his co-pilot in the eye at that moment, and his stomach was all bile and misery over it.

“ _Pounce_ engaging Pierrot and Falstaff!” Nepeta yelled over the comm. “Just get around Pillar of Faith and mew’ve got this!”

“Engaging rockets,” Jade said, and the screen lit up as _Dorothy_ fired a series of rockets at Pillar of Faith, hitting it squarely in the bulky abdomen area and making it lurch backward, the pillar of its head tipping forward as it being knocked away cleared a direct path to the Breach. The jaeger moved then, much faster than any machine of its size should have been able to move, and Dave watched the readouts on the screen shift, logging movement in _Dorothy_ ’s main chest compartment, where the device was housed. This was it. It was about to be over. Karkat squeezed his hand so tight they were both white-knuckled, hearts pounding and sick with fear over too many possibilities, over the sealing of the fate of the troll species along with the Breach, over how much risk their fellow pilots were taking just by interacting with these Kaiju, massive and unpredictable.

“Launching device!” Jade and Feferi called in unison over the comms, and the screens all flared with warnings, consoles lighting up like christmas trees and readings registering nuclear activity. Dave and Karkat both stared straight ahead, forcing themselves to watch and bear witness to the destruction on the monitors, the helmet cameras displaying the image of the massive device, a metallic sphere, hurtling towards the Breach.

“ _Detonation countdown_ ,” Hal’s voice echoed around LOCCENT control as the device shot through the water, leaving a trail of superheated bubbles in its wake. “ _Ten, nine, eight_ -”

Dave looked across the room at his brother, whose face was as impassive as ever.

“ _Seven, six, five_ -”

He looked back to the monitors, nauseated and clinging to Karkat’s hand like it was his lifeline.

“ _Four, three_ -”

He watched as Pillar of Faith suddenly jerked upward, the fleshy column of its head vibrating and making the camera feed shift and become staticky. The Kaiju, impossibly fast despite its awkward shape and massive size, shot forward, the beak of its mouth opening as it landed directly in the path of the device.

“What the-” Dirk began, but as he spoke the entire room erupted into shouts and screams, horror and disbelief echoing around the room as Pillar of Faith’s beaklike-mouth closed around the device, swallowing it.

“I…” Roxy almost collapsed back into Eridan’s arms, the two of them sheet-white and shaking. “Did it just…”

“Oh my god,” Dave mumbled, also leaning heavily on Karkat. As they watched, Pillar of Faith’s gargantuan torso seemed to expand abruptly, then contract, and when it opened its mouth again a small trail of steam curled around its beak. “Did it… eat the fucking nuke?”

“Device intercepted,” Hal’s voice echoed around the room. “Device neutralized.”

“Absorbed?” Eridan asked, his voice sharp.

“Oh no,” Roxy’s eyes were wide, the whites visible all around her pupils. “Oh no no no.”

Jade and Feferi both started yelling over the comms, the consoles displaying their readouts christmas tree flashes and shrieking alarms.

“Control, Pillar of Faith advancing-”

“-it’s vibrating that head column again, I think it’s glowing-”

“-how did it do that?”

“-Orders?”

“Hold the line!” Dirk yelled, his demeanor shredded, his hands balled into fists. “Activate defenses!”

Dave watched helplessly as Equius yelled over the comm. “ _Dorothy_ , _Pounce_ coming to assist, hold on!”

“Stand down _Pounce_!” Dirk yelled. “You need to focus on the clowns!”

“With all due respect, fuck that sir,” Nepeta said. “We’re going in.”

“ _Pounce_!” Dirk yelled, slamming a fist into the table. “Damnit!”

“Engaging Pillar of Faith,” Equius said, the hideous Category five Kaiju appearing on their camera feed for _Pounce_. “Preparing crossbow.”

“Deploying trident,” Feferi said, swinging _Dorothy_ ’s arm around to activate the viciously sharp weapon. “We’ll hold them off.”

“What now?!” Eridan threw his hands up, skin still pale grey with terror. “That horrorterror just ate the blasted device! We have no way to seal off the breach!”

“Focus on holding the Kaiju off,” Dirk said, talking to Eridan as much as he was the pilots. “ _Rosemary_ , status!”

“En route, Control,” Rose’s voice came over the comms. “Reaching coastal shelf, ETA five minutes.”

Alarms shrieked from the consoles again. Dave felt like he was outside of his body, watching the monitors with a kind of sick blank terror gripping his gut. _Dorothy_ swung the trident around to jab at the massive column of flesh on Pillar of Faith’s head, only to be hit in the side with the club-like jester arm of Falstaff. Behind it Pierrot swung two of its grotesque arms in _Pounce_ ’s direction, losing one to the vicious claws.

“Mayday, mayday!” Jade yelled over the comms as Falstaff took another swing, its little jester hand ramming into _Dorothy_ ’s helmet over and over again. “We’re losing primary systems!”

“Coming your way!” Nepeta yelled, _Pounce_ performing a spectacular leap through the water towards _Dorothy_ and Falstaff. Everyone in LOCCENT was silent, Dave barely even realizing that he had thrown an arm around Karkat’s waist, his co-pilot holding him tight. They were both breathless and horrified, shaking with residual adrenalin and terror.

“LOCCENT!” Feferi yelled, alarms shrieking again. Everything was a cacophony of chaos as the readings for nuclear energy spiked again, the image of Pillar of Faith on the screen began to blur as the Kaiju vibrated violently, its beaklike mouth beginning to open. “We’re getting a massive surge in energy from Pillar of Faith! We think its charging an attack!”

“It absorbed the nuke,” Roxy muttered, her voice a hoarse whisper. “And now it’s gonna use that energy to…” she trailed off, not having to say what would happen next. Dave felt like his insides were full of ice.

“Oh shit,” Dirk muttered, lurching forward to lean over Sollux’s console. “ _Dorothy_! _Pounce_! Retreat! You have to retreat!”

“We can’t abandon the breach!” Jade yelled back over the comms. “Sir if we don’t stand our ground-”

“Ranger, retreat to coastal shelf and wait for _Rosemary_!” Dirk yelled, his voice now desperate. “You’ve taken too many hits!”

“ _Dorothy_ watch out!” Nepeta’s voice screamed over the comms as Pillar of Faith lumbered forward, Falstaff jamming it’s jester hand into _Dorothy_ ’s abdomen. The biggest Kaiju began to glow brighter, the light emanating from its mouth.

“RETREAT!” Dirk yelled. “ _DOROTHY,_ GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!”

“We can’t!” Feferi screamed as _Dorothy_ tried to dart to the side, getting caught by Falstaff’s jester arm again. “They’ve got us cornered! There’s no way out!”

“ _Nuclear signature_ ,” Hal’s voice echoed again. “ _Pillar of Faith firing_.”

Dave clutched Karkat hard as Pillar of Faith’s beak creaked open, as a beam of piercing white light shot towards _Dorothy_. He heard a scream and he knew it came from him, his entire body feeling numb.

It happened too fast for anyone to process immediately. Dave and Karkat watched as _Pounce_ dragged Falstaff away with its claws, slammed into _Dorothy_ from the side, knocked her sideways and out of the way of the worst of the blast.

And taking the entire hit of absorbed nuclear energy square in the chest.

“ _NO_!” Dave wasn’t sure who had yelled the word. It could have been him, could have been Karkat, could have been any number of trolls or humans in the control room. The alarms flashed neon red as _Pounce_ crumbled apart like a shattered statue, pieces flying to either side and smashing into _Dorothy_ , one of the claws slamming right into _Dorothy_ ’s neck.

“Control!” Dave heard Feferi yelling over the comm. _Pounce_ is down! Repeat! _Pounce_ is down! _Dorothy_ is flooding! We need to eject!”

“Eject!” Dirk yelled back, his voice a strangled groan. “ _Pounce_ , come in! _Pounce_! Equius! Nepeta! Anyone!”

Dave watched, his legs jello, as the cameras lurched violently, as the readouts for the pilots spiked and shook. He watched Jade’s heartbeat stutter and slow, then rocket back up again, saw Equius staying strong despite the loud screams of agony and rage echoing over the busted communication system in _Pounce_. Saw Nepeta’s pulse sputter and become sluggish, holding on by some kind of thread. He had never felt more afraid, more sick, more furious, in his entire life, as he stood in the control room, powerless to save his fellow pilots, his friends.

“ _Rosemary_!” Dirk called, his voice hoarse. “Engage all three Kaiju, run interference and keep them away from the coast. _Dorothy_ , are you there?”

Silence. All four comms crackled with static. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the heart-rate monitors spiking and slowing, oscillating between painfully alive and creeping towards death. It felt like an absolute eternity before Sollux spoke:

“I’ve got eyeth on Feferi,” he said, relief in his voice palpable. “Thee and Jade evacuated, they’re at the thurfathe, thee’th giving Jade mouth-to-mouth.”

Another tense silence, followed by a crackle of static, a voice that sounded like it was being filtered through water, Feferi’s voice.

“ _LOCCENT --- on surface --- Equius and Nepeta --- destroyed but evac --- unknown --- Jade alive_.”

“Oh thank god,” Marshal Egbert had been silent for the duration of the horror, only now breaking his facade. “Get Jane, send her out in a chopper with the medical team, we need to recover all four of them.”

“Have we found Equius? Nepeta?” Dirk asked Sollux.

“I have them,” he confirmed. “Only have one heartbeat.”

“Get Jane out there now,” Marshal Egbert barked. “Get them back here now.”

Dave felt like his legs were about to give out, the relief of knowing that Jade and Feferi were alive overshadowed by the sick fear over the uncertain status of Equius and Nepeta. He felt like his entire world was being pulled out from under him, Karkat’s arm holding him steady but only barely. _Pounce_ was gone. Dorothy was gone. Nepeta and Equius were unaccounted for, Jade had almost drowned, Feferi was frantic. The last time Dave had felt like this had been that day in San Francisco when he'd seen his parents get devoured. He was shaking, trying to will Nepeta and Equius to be alive by sheer force of hope. _Please don’t be dead, please, please don’t be dead, please hold on, fucking please…_

“Well,” Dave heard Vriska from behind him, her voice cold. “That didn’t fucking work.”

Dirk rounded on her, his entire face red with fury. “Serket,” he snapped. “Unless you have a solution, you keep your insubordinate mouth shut.”

Dave felt Karkat shift beside him, gripping Dave’s hand a little more firmly. “We need to get out there,” he said, and Dave knew he was right. “Rosemary can’t hold three Kaiju off on her own.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” Vriska said, scowling at Dirk. “You can’t leave them out there to try and take down those three fuckers and whatever else is coming through the Breach after them.”

“She’s right,” Terezi agreed. Dave could swear he saw tears in the corners of Terezi’s eyes, and he knew she was as afraid as he was. She and Nepeta had always been close.

“What do we do though?” Dave asked, looking between his co-pilot and his fellow rangers. “Even if we have another nuke, that big fucker is gonna swallow it right up and deal it right fucking back to us. We need another way.”

“What other way is there?” Dirk asked, though his voice was tight, entire body bowstring taut and shaking with rage. Dave recognized it, knowing Dirk was actually relieved the device hadn’t closed the Breach, that their plan had failed and that he wouldn’t have the blood of an entire species on his hands. He was also furious with himself for even letting the plan come to pass, and Dave knew that, and was afraid he would have to insist they attempt it again. “If anybody has a way to stop Pillar of Faith, or even a better plan? For the love of god speak now.”

“We need more time,” Dave said, feeling like he was stating the obvious. “That’s the problem, we don’t know how to stop the attack, but if we just had more time, maybe we could fucking do something about it.”

“We could try to buy some time,” Eridan said suddenly. “If… if I’m right? There might be a way.”

Dirk was across the room in a flash, standing face-to-chest with the scientist. “How?” he asked, his voice quiet and serious. “Tell me how.”

Eridan took a step back, alarmed, but pointed to the model, which Roxy was examining. “The Breach is stable right now,” he said. “Because of all the activity. Looking at the readings, the stability is dependent on these specific points being in contact with the throat section of the rift opening, here and here.” He pointed at four spots on the virtual model, all of them along the inner corridor of the rift that connected the Breach to the Condesce’s Empire.

“So, those connections help keep the Breach stable once it’s open?” Dirk asked, seeking clarification.

“Yeah,” Roxy said. “Basically they’re coded to Kaiju DNA, and whenever one of them swims past those points, it registers their existence and keeps the whole thing open and clear so they can pass through. Sending bigger Kaiju through is only an option the more stable the throat is, and if you want to get anything else through, like, say, The Batterwitch’s ship?” She shrugged. “It’d have to be ‘multiple kids and a steady mortgage’ stable.”

“So if we damage those specific points,” Eridan said, pointing at them again. “It won’t close the Breach entirely, but destabilize it enough so nothing large enough to do significant damage can get through.”

“Are you sure that’s what’ll happen?” Dirk scrutinized the model, mouth pressed in an anxious line.

“It won’t seal it,” Roxy clarified. “But if we hit those spots, the fuckers who already came through will be stuck over here, and nothing bigger than a Category Two would be able to get to our side, at least for a while.”

“It’s not much,” Eridan added. “But it’ll stop Her from coming through, and if we can dispatch the three remaining horrorterrors, we will have bought some time for humanity, and the Alternian Empire to boot.”

Dirk looked between the two of them, then glanced over at Marshal Egbert. Dave felt Karkat’s hand in his again and glanced over at his co-pilot, whose expression was suddenly hopeful again, still deeply sad and afraid for the uncertain fates of their fellow pilots, but feeling renewed encouragement at this newly apparent plan. They could do this. They could buy everyone some time.

He turned back to Dirk and saw the Marshal nod before his brother spoke again. “Do it,” he said, and the control room was suddenly abuzz with action. Sollux began lisping orders into his headset while John immediately tore across the room, running presumably for weapons prep.

“All hands,” the Marshal said, his voice all business. “Load up the jaegers with all the rockets we have in the weapons bay. I need _Law and Order_ and _Prometheus_ ready to go immediately, drop time is five minutes ago, we’re on the clock here and burnin’ daylight. Go!”

Dave and Karkat didn’t need telling twice, both of them charging towards the docking station just behind Vriska and Terezi.

“Thir!” Sollux yelled. “I have Jane on commth! Thee’th found them!”

Dave and Karkat stopped, almost colliding with the other trolls, and the four of them turned around, waiting to hear what Jane had to say.

“ _This is Doctor Crocker!_ ” Jane’s voice came on over the comms, crackly and almost drowned out by the whirring of chopper blades. “ _We’ve recovered all four pilots_!”

“Status of the pilots,” Dirk was leaning over Sollux’s console as he spoke into the microphone. “How are they Jane?”

Jane’s voice was still echoey, but managed to come through over the speakers. “ _Jade and Feferi are both here with me, Jade’s still coughing up water and her leg’s broken but Feferi’s just bruised._ ”

“And _Pounce_?” Dirk asked. “How are Equius and Nepeta?”

Silence for a long moment, and when Jane spoke her voice was clearly cracking. “ _Equius’s lung collapsed. We’ve got him stabilized and he’s gonna pull through, but Nepeta…_ ” she trailed off, her voice breaking. “ _She’s still alive, but we think she took the worst of it. We can get her stable, but…_ ” Another pause, something like a sob. “ _We don’t know if she’s going to wake up_.”

The room was dead silent, everyone shocked into stillness. Dave felt like his head was spinning and he grabbed at Karkat, who held him steady, looking sick.

“Get them back here,” Dirk said, his voice also cracking. “Do everything you can.”

“ _It was the Drift,_ ” Jane added, now definitely crying. “ _Being in the Drift together when it happened is keeping them both alive._ ”

The silence seemed almost deafening for another moment until Dirk stepped away from the console. “Keep me updated,” he said. “Everyone go, we don’t have much time.”

_“Law and Order_ deploying firtht,” Sollux called out to the room as a whole. “Get down there. _Prometheuth_ , thuit up and get to the conn pod athap.”

Dave snapped out of his silence, gritting his teeth. He looked at Karkat and as their eyes met he knew once again that their expressions were mirrors of each other. They both nodded at each other and started running towards the door, Dave’s insides no longer twisted snakes, no longer ice, no longer nausea-infested and pained. Everything about Dave was iron and resolve, grim determination and defiance.

They reached the elevator and the two of them stood inside, both composed of tense muscles and adrenaline, practically vibrating with righteous fury and anticipation. They exchanged another glance.

“Ready for this?” Karkat asked.

Dave nodded, and took Karkat’s hand. “Born ready. Let’s do this shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay everyone, the holidays kinda kicked my ass. But on the plus side, you get to have some suffering to ring in your new year. 
> 
> commence screaming below in the comments, and thanks as always for leaving kudos and kind comments. Despite my monstrosity. Special shoutout to my beta Taz for reading so quickly so I can post this sucker. I should be back on track for next Thursday with a new chapter.


	19. Your Time Is Now

_Change everything you are_  
_And everything you were_  
_Your number has been called_  
_Fights and battles have begun_  
_Revenge will surely come_  
_Your hard times are ahead_

_Best,_  
_You've got to be the best_  
_You've got to change the world_  
_And use this chance to be heard_  
_Your time is now._  
\-- From ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ by Muse  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIZ-iYNRHWE))  
__

Suiting up didn’t take long, Karkat helping Dave with the more cumbersome aspects of his armor and Dave helping Karkat with his. Even though this was only their second time getting ready for an actual drop, they both geared up like they had been doing it naturally their whole lives, like dancers who knew all the steps. They took off towards the conn. pod at a run, the entire Shatterdome alive and chaotic, a cacophony of alarms and alerts mixing with the creak and hum of jaegers warming up in their bays. If the circumstances had been different the entire situation would have given Karkat a kind of awed pause, made him take a moment to once again appreciate the impossible symphony of the interspec program at its finest.

Circumstances as they were meant he couldn’t dawdle though, and he and Dave kept pace with each other all the way up to _Prometheus’_ cockpit, where the engineers helped them into their harnesses. Their first drop had included some small talk with the techs, even some banter, but this time everyone was silent and grave, Karkat included. He knew all of them were waiting to hear more from Jane about whether or not Nepeta was going to wake up.

Dave didn’t speak either as _Prometheus_ slowly exited the docking bay, wheeled by dozens of tanks towards the waiting wires that would connect them to the transport choppers. Karkat couldn’t blame him for his silence. The troll hadn’t been overly close to any of the pilots he had fought with during the Assault, except of course for Gamzee, so Dave knew Nepeta and Equius far better than he did. Karkat also knew that even after the plan Dirk and the Marshal had put forth had been an abject failure, Dave was still silently in knots over what he had said to his brother.

It wasn’t just the Drift that told Karkat that, but it provided clear confirmation, and he let his own mind wander through the flurry of their shared images and blurred memories, focusing in on something positive, something empowering. Their shared experiences were the easiest to grasp, and Karkat thought hard about their victory over the two horrorterrors that had tried to destroy Hong Kong, visualized the sensation of their combined sword and sickle slicing through the Kaiju’s hideous flesh. He heard Dave huff out a small satisfied noise, and glanced over to see his co-pilot give him a thumbs up. Karkat felt his concerns lessen, but only in the sense of rearrangement. Dave would deal with his issues with his brother later, for now they had to stay entirely in the present and the Drift, focusing on the battle ahead. Karkat would be there to help him figure things out with Dirk of course, that went without saying.

Provided, of course, they survived.

_“Transport liftoff,”_ Hal’s voice echoed over _Prometheus’_ internal comms. _“Beginning approach to continental shelf.”_

Karkat remained silent as the choppers transported Prometheus to the continental shelf, he and Dave both tense as they listened to the information Kanaya shared over the comms about how she and Rose were progressing with fending off the trio of horrorterrors.

_“This is_ Rosemary,” her voice echoed into Karkat’s helmet. _“Both clowns are distracted but Pillar of Faith isn’t moving, it is determined to stay by the Breach.”_

_“ETA for_ Law and Order?” came Dirk’s voice.

_“Six minutes, LOCCENT,”_ came Terezi’s nasal tone. _“Going full speed ahead.”_

“ _Prometheus_ checking in,” Karkat chimed in, checking their readouts. “Three minutes to continental shelf.”

_“Head for Falstaff,_ Prometheus,” said Dirk. “Law and Order, _engage Pierrot as soon as you get there._ Rosemary, _divert all attention to Pillar of Faith, we need to get the Cat Five out of the way so we can target the weak zones in the rift.”_

“Copy that,” Karkat said, and the other pilots all echoed the sentiment as the choppers buzzed inexorably towards their drop position. Dave’s fingers twitched idly, his nervous energy so strong Karkat could almost taste it. Karkat found that his own fingers twitched too, his co-pilot’s habits seamlessly integrating into his own.

The passing minutes crept, feeling more like hours. By the time _Prometheus_ reached the shelf Karkat thought he was going to implode with pent up adrenaline and tension. He felt relieved when he finally heard Vriska’s voice over the comms.

“Law and Order _engaging the clowns,”_ she said. _“Focus on the big sucker,_ Rosemary, _the cavalry’s here!”_

_“They’re all yours, Scourge,”_ Rose replied, using the team’s nickname. _“We’ll get to work on the Pillar._ ”

_“Fuck yeah,”_ Vriska said. _“We’ll show the clowns who’s laughing now. You coming,_ Prometheus, _or are we gonna have this insane posse all to ourselves?”_

“Hold your fucking hoofbeasts, Scourge,” Karkat said, but he said so with a grin rather than exasperation. “Save some for the rest of us.”

_“No promises,”_ Terezi purred over the comm. _“I’m suddenly very ready to be down with the clown.”_

“That was a mental image none of us needed,” Dave said, making Karkat snort.

_“Approaching continental shelf in t-minus thirty seconds,”_ Hal’s voice echoed over the speakers. _“Begin drop sequence.”_

“Beginning drop sequence,” Karkat confirmed, he and Dave both reaching out to initiate the commands on their console. “Initiating clamp release.”

_“Release engaged,”_ Hal replied. _“Drop in ten, nine, eight, seven-”_

“Thrusters primed,” Dave said. “Ready for descent.”

_“Five, four-”_

Karkat hit the initialization sequence. “Let’s do it.”

_“Two, one. Drop sequence engaged.”_

Karkat felt his stomach lurch as everything suddenly went into freefall around him. Proximity alarms blared and then they hit the Pacific Ocean with an eardrum-rattling crash, _Prometheus_ compensating for impact with thrust. They both got their bearings quickly as they landed on the ocean floor, the continental shelf rising behind them as they began to walk. Readouts on their console pinged as they registered massive forms moving in the distance, and Karkat set his jaw, holding onto the adrenaline and channelling it into getting them to move as fast as possible towards the fight.

“Approaching Breach,” Karkat said into his comm. “Status of Kaiju? What’s going on out there?”

_“Pillar of Faith engaged,”_ Kanaya’s voice was slightly frantic. _“Deploying needlewands.”_

_“Keep it up,_ Rosemary!” Terezi yelled. “Prometheus, _we need you here five minutes ago.”_

“What happened to being down with the clown?” Dave asked, his voice all smirk.

_“If a clown wants to be this down with me? It’d better buy me dinner first,”_ Terezi shot back, and Karkat heard Vriska let out a scoffing laugh as they returned to the fight. Karkat saw the radar flare with the light of rocket fire and knew that _Law and Order_ had deployed missiles to get the Kaiju away from the Breach. He hoped it would work.

“ETA three minutes _Law and Order_ ,” Karkat said. “Hold on, we’re on our way.”

_“Hurry,”_ Rose called, her voice as frantic as Kanaya’s. _“Pillar of Faith is charging that attack again, we can only hold it off for so long, we need something that will distract it and pull it away from the Breach!”_

“Cool,” Dave said, and what he thought of flashed through Karkat’s mind, making the troll grin. “One distraction, coming right up.”

The ocean floor was uneven this close to the Breach, steam vents hissing jets of bubbles up into the surrounding water. Karkat and Dave closed the last bit of distance between _Prometheus_ and the Kaiju but stopped a few hundred feet from the nearest of the monsters, Pierrot, whose grotesque grin was turned towards _Law and Order_ , distracted.

“Wait for it,” Karkat mumbled, watching the readouts on his sensors, which began pinging loudly, warning of an impending spike in temperature. “Hal, ready melee deployment.”

_“Weapons primed,”_ the AI replied. _“Warning, ocean vent ejecting fluid in fifteen seconds, temperatures approaching 400 degrees Celsius.”_

“Good,” Karkat said, gritting his teeth. “Let’s give this fucker a faceful of metal.”

“Hell yeah,” Dave agreed, hitting buttons on the console. “Hal, deploy melee weapons!”

_“Weapons deploying,”_ Hal responded, and the sword and sickle slid seamlessly out of _Prometheus’_ arms, held at the ready. _“Sword and Sickle ready. Eruption in three… two… one.”_

The dense fluid and bubbles shot out of the ocean vent, propelling _Prometheus_ forward at an alarming rate. Karkat engaged thrusters and they cut through the dark ocean like a bullet, weapons out in front of them as they headed straight for Pierrot.

_“Proximity warni-”_ Hal began, but the artificial voice was cut off by the bone-rattling ‘THUD’ sound of the jaeger slamming into the Kaiju. Karkat felt like every inch of his body had just been slammed into a concrete wall, but as he and Dave both regained their bearings they recovered quickly, their weapons firmly buried in Pierrot’s back. Acid blood drifted from the wounds, permeating the ocean around them, and the beast gave a muted shriek, muffled by the deep water.

_“Holy shit,”_ Karkat heard Vriska over the comms and he smirked a little, both he and Dave gripping their weapons tight as they began to pull downward, turning the stab wounds in Pierrot’s hide into deep gashes. _“That got its fucking attention.”_

_“We’ve got Falstaff away from the Breach,”_ Terezi yelled, and Karkat checked his monitors to see _Law and Order_ firing their smaller rockets at the other clown. “Rosemary, _do what you can to keep Pillar distracted, we’ll take the clowns down and regroup from there.”_

_“Copy,”_ Kanaya said over the comm. _“We will hold it off as long as we can!”_

_Prometheus_ held onto Pierrot’s thick torso with the sickle and dragged the sword through flesh, releasing more acid. Karkat and Dave pulled the weapon out and swung again and again, hacking at the clown’s nearest limbs with more force than precision. Their goal was distraction above all things, and as the creature expelled acid blood and bubbling shrieks, Karkat felt like they’d managed to pull it off, keeping the beast focused on them instead of _Rosemary_ and Pillar of Faith.

_“Warning,”_ Hal’s voice echoed around the cockpit. _“Kaiju regeneration detected.”_

“You’re shitting me,” Dave growled through gritted teeth, but the AI had reported accurately: as the pilots watched, the stump of Pierrot’s arm writhed and bulged, replaced slowly by another limb even more grotesque and misshapen than the ones _Prometheus_ had severed. “Now that shit’s just unfair.”

“Prometheus, _did that piece of shit clown just regrow his arm?!”_ Terezi called to Karkat and Dave over the comms.

“Keep an eye on your own chucklefuck,” Karkat called back, more concerned than angry at her question. “If Pierrot’s got surprises, I guarantee Falstaff’s got a few of its own!”

_“Copy that,”_ Vriska replied, her tone surprisingly receptive to their suggestions. _“C’mon Rez, let’s show this circus freak sideshow reject who its daddy is.”_

Pierrot threw _Prometheus_ off with a violent grab and swing of its freshly grown limbs, sending them tumbling back towards the steam vents behind them. Karkat and Dave righted themselves just in time to watch _Law and Order_ slash their sword cane through the water at impossible speeds, severing Falstaff’s arm.

“Yes!” Karkat yelled, Dave echoing his sentiment, but their victorious yells were short-lived as they watched the detached limb fall in what looked almost like an explosion of confetti.

_“What the-”_ Vriska began, but her words rapidly devolved into a loud scream of shock and rage as the confetti flew out of Falstaff’s arm stump and shot towards them, stabbing directly into _Law and Order_ ’s hull in thick glassy red shards.

Dave and Karkat barely had time to duck out of the way as still more shards spewed from Falstaff’s stump, hurtling through the water towards them, flying in all directions. “Fuck me,” Karkat breathed as they righted themselves from a quick rolling dodge, bringing their weapons up to guard against Pierrot, who was still coming after them with a vengeance. “That fucking clown has weaponized blood! What else can they do, fire fucking lasers?”

“Don’t give ‘em any ideas,” Dave replied, voice strained as they swung the sword to block Pierrot’s arm, slicing through it only to see more hideous growths sprout from the Kaiju’s shoulder. The clown’s new limbs looked more like tentacles or fronds than anything close to human.

“Law and Order, _report in_ ,” Karkat heard Dirk’s voice over the comm. _“What’s happening out there?”_

_“Turns out Falstaff has shards of weaponized confetti blood,”_ Terezi groaned, her voice ragged. _“Took direct hits to the chestplate and helmet, we’re still up but it’s not looking good.”_

“Trade us,” Karkat jumped in. “Our weapons are super-heated and can cauterize that shit, so we’ll deal with the blood Pinata and you guys can take the creature with a thousand fucking arms over here.”

_“And its not even my wriggling day,”_ Terezi replied, a smile in her voice. _“Let’s make it happen.”_

Dave and Karkat took one last swing at Pierrot, focusing on the Kaiju’s torso instead of its limbs, releasing more acidic blood into the water. “Activating thrusters,” Dave yelled, tugging on a lever that sent them shooting away from the clown and towards _Law and Order_ , who had done the same.

A thought flashed through Karkat’s mind and he looked over at Dave, knowing he was the source. Of course it was. Karkat would never come up with something so fucking asinine. “Fine,” Karkat grumbled, and Dave laughed, all bravado and thinly-veiled terror.

“Hey ladies,” Dave called over the comm. “Gimme five.”

Karkat heard Vriska snort derisively and Terezi cackle. _“Hell yes,”_ Terezi called, and as they rocketed towards the other jaeger, Karkat saw Law and Order extend its closest hand, palm open. As _Prometheus_ shot past them, Dave and Karkat threw their jaeger’s hand out too, and the two Jaegers met in a brief and deliriously sicknasty high five.

They heard everyone in LOCCENT control cheering over the comms. Karkat made a mental note to scream at Dave for ever letting a phrase that ridiculous enter his mind when they were Drifting.

“You love it,” Dave sniped, the two of them swinging their weapons back around just in time to greet Falstaff with a sword and sickle directly to its face. “Don’t deny it.”

“If we survive this I’m going to murder you slowly,” Karkat growled.

“Long as you buy me dinner first,” Dave replied.

“Obviously,” Karkat snapped, more focused on the fight than the banter, the two of them hooking the sickle around Falstaff’s neck, piercing the hideous flaps of skin on its face. “I’m a fucking gentleman.”

“Its a date,” Dave laughs, a little out of breath, the two of them swinging the sword forward to slice into Falstaff, the superheated weapon making the monster’s flesh sizzle. “This is _so_ romantic, Karkat, dinner _and_ the evisceration of horrorterrors, I’m being spoiled!”

“Shut the fuck up you insufferable nooksore,” Karkat managed through gritted teeth as they were knocked sideways by a punch from Falstaff’s remaining fist. “Kill the Kaiju now, flirt later.”

_“But we’re all SO enjoying it,_ ” Vriska’s voice echoed over the comm. _“Tell me, is it Red or Black, Vantas?”_

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Karkat replied. “On account of THESE FUCKING CLOWNS TRYING TO KILL US.”

_“Fiiiiiine,”_ Terezi whined. _“But you’re telling us all about it later.”_

If they survived. She didn’t say it, and neither did Karkat. Voicing it somehow would have made it feel even more impossible than it already did.

Falstaff swung at them again but _Prometheus_ managed to dodge out of the way, rolling and swinging their sword again to cut another thick gash along the Kaiju’s abdomen. Their attacks were having some effect, but it wasn’t happening fast enough, and they both knew that every second they wasted on Falstaff was a second that made things more dire for _Rosemary_ , who was still battling Pillar of Faith with every fiber of their strength.

“We gotta switch it up,” Karkat said, knowing Dave was on his wavelength here. “Hal, deploy short-range missiles.”

_“Missiles deploying,”_ Hal echoed, and Dave and Karkat sheathed their sword and sickle, jumping back to try and ground themselves, preparing a barrage.

That was when Falstaff opened its mouth and let out a sonic bellow forceful enough to knock _Prometheus_ violently backwards, sailing through the water and slamming into the rocky ocean floor. The sound seemed to echo and rattle around _Prometheus’_ cockpit, far longer than any ordinary sound should, and Karkat could swear he heard menacing laughter mixed with an eerie outbursting of ‘honks’.

“Shit,” Dave breathed, the wind knocked out of his lungs. “I think that clown is laughing at us.”

“Fucking chucklevoodos,” Karkat muttered, groaning as they rolled and used thrusters to shift back upright. “Nice to know that’s a thing juggalos do universally, horrorterror or troll.”

“Fuck this,” Dave leaned forward and hit buttons on the console. “Lets give him everything we’ve got.”

“Lets give this clown a miracle worth praising,” Karkat agreed, hitting his own sequence of buttons.

Dave snorted. “Fuck, Karkat, you rehearse that line in front of the mirror before we dropped?”

“Right, like you’re the only one who gets to say cool shit, fuck you.”

“Maybe later.”

“UGH,” Karkat slammed his fist into the button panel. “Deploying missiles. Eat shit, Falstaff.”

_“Deploying,”_ Hal echoed, and a barrage of firepower erupted from _Prometheus’_ chestplate. The Kaiju spun, opening its mouth again, but before it could let out another earth-shattering honk, the missiles hit it square in the face.

“YES,” Dave and Karkat yelled, watching as the Kaiju’s head exploded in bloody confetti, dodging away from the worst of the blast. A few shards embedded themselves in Prometheus’ arms and abdomen, setting off alarms, but they paid it no mind, cheering in unison with the rest of the crowd back at LOCCENT on the surface.

_“Nice shot,”_ Karkat heard Vriska say grudgingly over the comm. _“Wanna come help us with his brother?”_

“We’re leaking coolant,” Dave called, hitting buttons and running rerouting systems to keep Prometheus from overheating. “Fucking clown blood bullshit, remind me to get a sample of that for Roxy so I can yell at her about it.”

_“Prometheus!”_ The yell cut through the comm like an edged weapon, Rose’s voice high and desperate. Karkat felt Dave’s stomach clench, suddenly sick. _“Pillar’s weapon is almost charged, we need help!”_

“Fuck,” Dave’s mind suddenly filled with panic, flashes of his sister’s cries for help echoing over both the comm and through his memories. “Rose!”

“Dave,” Karkat held on tight to the Drift, focused, guiding the memories and pushing them out of his co-pilot’s mind, practically assaulting him with something else, something Dave could hold on to.

_...Lips pressed against his in the hallway in the medical wing, hands roaming eagerly and desperately, soft gasping and desire, hot and sweet, a need, something deeper than a need, an awakening, an admittance of a secret too private for either of them to voice..._

Dave gasped, jerking to one side, and Karkat felt him land firmly in the present once again.

“Good?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dave said, breathless again, getting his bearings. “We’re coming _Rosemary_ , hang on!”

Karkat hit thrusters and Dave deployed melee weapons again, _Prometheus_ speeding towards _Rosemary_ and Pillar of Faith as fast as they could, the water around them bubbling upon contact with the superheated weaponry.

_“Control!”_ Karkat heard Kanaya’s voice over the comm, the fear in her voice sharp. _“Control, there is movement in the Breach!”_

“Oh _shit_ ,” Dave and Karkat pushed the thrusters harder, charging towards the massive hulking form of the misshapen column of flesh, readying a swing. Karkat watched the monitors as Pillar of Faith opened its strange little beak and seemed to swell, like it was drawing in a breath.

“NO,” Dave yelled, and _Prometheus_ knocked into the Kaiju’s side as it spewed energy at _Rosemary_ , their impact tilting the monster to the side and throwing the beam’s path off to an angle.

Off course, but not enough.

The beam sliced through _Rosemary_ ’s legs, taking the jaeger down with a sickening thud, its limbs splayed across the rock of the ocean floor.

“NO!” Dave screamed again, and he and Karkat swung their sword and sickle violently, digging into Pillar of Faith’s squat body and hanging on as the creature tried to shake them off like they were an inconvenient insect. “ROSE! OH GOD, _ROSE_!”

It took every ounce of Karkat’s will to keep Dave from dropping out of alignment, his head feeling almost like it was ready to implode with the effort, so he found himself sobbing tears of relief when he heard Dave’s twin over the comm system, faint but alive.

_“Control!”_ Rose gasped. “Rosemary _is critical, we’re still alive but we’re taking on water!_ ”

_“Eject!”_ Karkat heard Dirk yelling over the comms, the deputy’s usual calm and decorum thrown completely out the window. _“For gods sake Rose, Kanaya, get out of there!”_

_“Ejecting,”_ Rose called. _“Thanks Prometheus, you kept the worst of it off us.”_

“Get outta here Rose,” Dave yelled, calmer but still frantic, his emotions driving him and Karkat to hack and slash at any part of Pillar of Faith they could reach. It was a more difficult task than it seemed, the horrorterror’s tiny limbs had vicious claws on the end, its pillared flesh column head swinging at them to battering ram them away from the breach, sending them jerking backwards and away again.

“Prometheus, Law and Order, _Rose and Kanaya have ejected_ ,” Karkat heard Dirk over the comms. _“Status!”_

_“We’ve got Pierrot,”_ Vriska called, her voice tense but determined. _“Keep it up with Pillar,_ Prometheus, _we can shut these fuckers down!”_

__“Warning: movement in the breach,”_ _ Hal’s automated voice echoed, and Karkat felt his guts twist with fear.

“Fuck, what now?” Dave groaned as they picked themselves back up, readying themselves for another run at Pillar of Faith. “Have Jay and Shaggy and their pal dickhead here got more friends for us to worry about?”

__“Oh FUCK,”_ _ Karkat heard Sollux’s voice over the comm system. __“Dirk, it’th Her.”__

Karkat felt all the blood drain from his face at his friend’s words, the horror of the idea too much to imagine, but Sollux was never wrong, and Karkat could see the readouts on _Prometheus’_ screen clear as day. The scan of the breach pulsed red with heat and energy as something massive moved through it, bigger than any Kaiju of any category, wider and curved with prongs along the front of it.

Karkat had seen that ship before. They all had, the day they had run the Assault on the Breach.

The Condesce was in the Breach. If they didn’t get it destabilized, it was game over.

Karkat swallowed, listened to the chatter over the comms in a daze. Dirk was barking orders, telling them and __Law and Order__ to drop their payloads through the breach no matter what it took, it was time, this was it, they had to stop Her, had to keep her from coming through. He heard Vriska and Terezi yelling, arguing as they took more brutal swings at Pierrot, watched as Pillar of Faith turned back towards the breach to stand guard, saw the mangled remains of __Rosemary_ _ on the ocean floor.

He felt Dave in his head, tense and determined, and looked to his left to see his co-pilot facing him, meeting his eyes, his expression filled with a kind of relentless fire.

“Karkat,” he said, his voice low enough that Karkat could barely hear it. He didn’t need to hear it though. The Drift did the rest. “If we don’t get through this?”

“Yeah?” Karkat breathed, feeling his heart stop in his chest. He knew what was coming, but that was all the Drift’s doing, and there was and always would be a difference between what was felt and what was said, what was uncontrollable and what was given.

“If we don’t make it through this...” Dave swallowed, and he reached over to grab Karkat’s hand. “... Know that I love you.”

Karkat thought he heard a roaring in his ears, like all of the blood in his body had suddenly rushed to his head, and he held tight to Dave’s hand, using it as an anchor to reality. Everything came slamming back into him, the sounds of proximity alarms and shrieking Kaiju and the expression on his co-pilot’s face.

It wandered through his mind that he’d never be able to explain what it meant to hear Dave say those words aloud.

He didn’t try.

“I love you too,” Karkat said, releasing Dave’s hand after one final squeeze.

Dave’s mouth curved upward in a smile, his cheeks flushed, and he turned back to the controls. “Well,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Shit. Now we’ve gotta survive this.”

Karkat barked out a laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, no shit genius,” he replied. “You got any bright ideas?”

“Nah,” Dave said, grinning a bit. “But I think you do.”

Karkat’s biting retort died on his lips as his brain finished processing the situation, as a plan snapped into focus, echoing through the Drift, which seemed to hum around and through him more strongly than it ever had before, more than he had ever thought possible.

“Yeah,” he breathed, hitting buttons on the console in front of him and setting his jaw. “I’ve got something stupid, crazy, and fucking suicidal.”

“Perfect,” Dave replied, and called out to his brother. “Yo, Dirk, don’t let the fat lady sing just yet. We’ve got a plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re back, and I am so happy to give y’all the next, long-anticipated chapter of If I Lose Everything in the Fire. It has been a rough semester and I have been exhausted, overworked, depressed, and stressed out, but I’m on spring break, and I spent my four hour flight to a conference churning out this chapter. I can’t make promises for any kind of timeline on the next chapter, but we are SO CLOSE to the end, and I’m gonna fight to get it to you as soon as humanly possible. 
> 
> Keep an eye on my Tumblr for any updates, and thank you all SO MUCH for your patience and understanding. Getting a PhD is even harder than you’d think, and the fact that you care about this fic and about my wellbeing has kept me going during the tough times. 
> 
> Special thanks in this chapter go to my Beta, Taz, for always drop everything to read what I write and catch the little things I always seem to fuck up. You’re the best, dude. A huge thank you and shoutout to my friends on discord, especially Dusty and Danni for helping me come up with horrifying and unique attacks for the Kaiju in this chapter. Finally, sending my boyfriend Betty a hug and a high five for being the Karkat to my Dave and putting up with my ridiculous ideas. 
> 
> Much love to all of you, and thanks again for reading!


	20. Try To Picture Me Without You

_Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith,_  
_Is when it's tested again and again everyday,_  
_I'm still comparing your past to my future,_  
_It might be your wound but they're my sutures,_

_I am the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass_  
_I try to picture me without you but I can't_

_'Cause we could be immortals, immortals_  
_Just not for long, for long,_  
_And live with me forever now,_  
_Pull the blackout curtains down,_  
_Just not for long, for long_

  
\-- From ‘Immortals’ by Fall Out Boy  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBiQCZd8UII))  
__

“ _You gonna enlighten us in the mysterious details of this plan, or are we gonna sit here and become kaiju food while you boys play the hero?_ ” Vriska’s voice over the comm knocked Dave out of his drift-induced consideration of Karkat’s suicidal idea that just might save them all.

“As soon as we know it’s even possible,” Karkat snapped. “Roxy, you there?”

“ _Got me on the horn, Vantas_ ,” Dave’s sister piped up immediately, sounding anxious but determined, ready to help. “ _Whatcha need_?”

“When you and Eridan drifted with the Kaiju baby,” Karkat began, looking intensely serious as he spoke. “You got an idea of what these clown fucks and their creepy flesh-column friend were planning, right?”

“ _That and more than I ever wanted to know about horrorterror reproduction cycles_ ,” Roxy replied. “ _Whatcha wanna know_?”

“They’re guarding the breach, right?” Karkat asked. “So the Batterwitch can come through?”

“ _They’re the vanguard_ ,” Roxy confirmed. “ _Once they’ve cleared the path, it’s opening night for the end of the world_.”

“So She won’t be coming through until they give her the okay?”

“ _Until they clear out the jaegers, she’ll be chillin’ on her side of the Breach_ ,” Roxy agreed. “ _What’s your angle, Karkat_?”

Dave saw Karkat’s lips press together, forming a thin line as he considered the sheer lunacy of his plan. “We take out the clown,” he said. “Then we’ll focus on Pillar of Faith, keep it alive but distract it, get it away from the breach, and once it’s clear, Scourge comes around the side and fires weapons, destabilizes the breach.”

_“Are you insane?”_ Terezi yelled over the comms. “ _Karkat, that horrorterror just took out_ Rosemary _without breaking a sweat, going after it like that is suicide_!”

“That’s why it’s called a suicidal plan,” Dave snorted. “On account of the potential for not getting out alive.”

“ _Law and Order_ is faster and maneuvers better in water,” Karkat added. “If anyone can get past Pillar and fire into the breach, it's you guys. Even if we don’t survive, if we can keep that piece of shit distracted long enough to destabilize the breach then it’ll be worth it.”

“ _It’s beyond risky_ ,” Roxy murmured over the comm. _“Especially since you have to keep Pillar alive. If that Kaiju goes down, I guarantee you the Batterwitch will take the chance and start her invasion, so you’re going to have a window of opportunity smaller than my sobriety, my dudes_.”

“It’s worth it,” Karkat replied, his jaw set. “We always said we’d do whatever it takes to stop her, even before we came to earth. Time to practice what we preach.”

“Dirk?” Dave called out to his older brother, his stomach twisting in the process. “It’s your call.”

Silence hung in the cockpit a moment, Dave’s guts churning with every passing second as he waited to hear back from his brother. When Dirk spoke he let out a breath he’d barely realized he had been holding.

“ _Do it,_ ” Dirk said, his tone clear and determined. “ _It’s the end of the world, screw playing it safe._ ”

“Hell yeah,” Dave cheered and started hitting buttons on _Prometheus_ ’ console, prepping the jaeger. “One suicide mission, coming right up.”

“ _We’re still on Pierrot,_ ” Vriska called over to them, all business. “ _Soon as it’s dead, you get Pillar’s attention with whatever the hell it is you’re going to do_.”

“ _Karkat_ ,” Roxy’s voice came over the comm, more excited than anxious. “ _What exactly ARE you going to do to distract it?_ ”

“ _If it’s anything like your last distraction, it’s gonna be a banger_ ,” Terezi said, and Dave heard a few scattered cheers from LOCCENT, everyone remembering the way _Prometheus_ had shot through the water riding the steam from the ocean vents. “ _Standby,_ Prometheus.”

“Standing by,” Karkat called back, also hitting buttons on his side of the console. Dave watched him out of the corner of his eye, and the memory of the words they had shared minutes ago flooded him with adrenaline even stronger than the fear of what they were about to attempt. Karkat ran a few more repair subroutines and then looked over at Dave, who didn’t drop his gaze, the two of them exchanging a look all the more meaningful for their connection through the Drift.

“Time to save the world?” Dave asked, his voice a little thick.

Karkat’s face split into a grin and Dave felt his stomach do a little flip. “Just another day at the office,” he replied.

Dave laughed, a little hysterically. “Am I fucking insane because even after all of this shit, I’d still take jaeger pilot over desk jockey for my day job?”

“Yeah,” Karkat’s grin became a smirk. “But you gotta be batshit up the fucking belfry to keep doing this anyway, so you’re in good company.”

A loud whooping shriek came over the comm system and Dave and Karkat watched their screens as _Law and Order_ went zipping past them and slammed straight into Pierrot’s side, firing on all cylinders. After a few seconds, a volley of rockets shot out of _Law and Order_ ’s arm cannons, making the Kaiju shriek and wave its morbid tentacle limbs in distress.

“Case in point,” Karkat said, now laughing himself before tapping the comm button. “Nice work, _Law and Order_!”

“ _This clown is gonna feel the full force of the law before it dies!_ ” Terezi yelled back, manic and cackling.

“ _The law is what she calls the sword,_ ” Vriska added, and as she spoke the blade of the Jaeger’s sword cane flicked through the water and slashed across the Kaiju’s abdomen, sending more sizzling acid blood into the water. “ _Order is my fist!_ ”

Dave watched as _Law and Order_ twisted back and began punching the Kaiju repeatedly in the face. He felt all the petty squabbles and disagreements both he and Karkat had experienced with Vriska and Terezi fade into the background, overshadowed by a kind of ridiculous and audacious hope for the plan they had just put in motion. Dave knew he would never get along with either member of Scourge all that well, especially not Vriska, but watching the two of them fight in this impossible war was more than enough for him to hold a profound respect for their dedication, their madness, their talent. Terezi and Vriska were both abrasive, harsh, cruel, and even sometimes abusive, to each other and others around them. He doubted they could survive, let alone thrive, in any other line of work.

Some people weren’t built for anything but killing monsters, and that was the case for the pilots of _Law and Order_. Dave was glad they were with the good guys.

“Keep it up!” Karkat yelled, breaking Dave out of his contemplations. “That shitclown’s ready to keel over and die.”

“Prometheus!” Dave and Karkat heard Dirk over the comms. “ _Pillar’s getting restless, we think it’s charging that weapon again_!”

Dave checked his scanners and felt his chest tighten, the readings on Pillar of Faith spiking violently as the horrorterror continued to charge its devastating energy attack. “We might have to initiate Distract-a-Kaiju a little earlier than we planned,” he said, tapping at his console.

“Yep,” Karkat agreed, his teeth gritted. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, a whisper, only loud enough for Dave to hear. “Fuck, I hope this works.”

“It’ll work,” Dave reached over to squeeze Karkat’s hand. “We might die horribly, but it’s gonna work.”

“Suddenly you’re psychic?” Karkat grumbled, also tapping at the console, pulling up protocols and subroutines in seamless harmony with his copilot.

“Just trusting you, bro,” Dave says, smiling. “You know, no homo.”

“Oh shut the fuck up,” Karkat rolled his eyes. “ _Law and Order_ , we’re initiating our Distraction, head for the Breach as soon as that clown hits the ground.”

“ _Copy_ ,” Terezi replied. “ _You better blow us away with this one, Vantas, or I’m gonna be real disappointed_.”

“Oh trust me,” Karkat said, his teeth still clenched together. “We aren’t here to disappoint.”

Dave slapped a quick sequence of buttons on his console. “Activating lasso protocol.”

The two of them heard the words “ _Activate WHAT?!_ ” echo across their comms from both _Law and Order_ and LOCCENT control, and Dave’s mouth split into a manic smile.

“ _Lasso Protocol, activated_ ,” Hal’s voice echoed through the cockpit, and Dave and Karkat shifted so _Prometheu_ s stood with its feet firmly planted on the ocean floor, braced and ready as a thick coil of cable snaked out from the Jaeger’s left arm.

“And y’all laughed at me when I said I was gonna give this mech the Texas treatment,” Dave said, the cable unwinding into a long strand around them, a loop curling on its furthest end. “Let’s rope us a Kaiju.”

_“He’s insane_ ,” Dave heard Vriska’s voice over the comm, but she sounded impressed, incredulous. “ _He’s fucking insane_.”

“That’s why I love him,” Karkat said, making Dave blush. “Okay, it’s all you, Strider, prove to me you actually know how to do this shit.”

“It’s high noon,” Dave replied, and took the lead on guiding _Prometheus_ ’ movements, bringing the left arm of the mech up and beginning to swing the cable through the water, activating rockets to pick up the speed, make the cable spin faster. As they spun and worked, Dave could hear his sister on the other end of the LOCCENT comms, explaining the lasso as a modified harpoon gun, and every word she spoke was dripping with pride for her little brother’s ingenuity. Dave thought his heart might explode out of his chest.

“ _Peak lasso velocity achieved_ ,” Hal’s voice echoed through the cockpit once more and Dave set his jaw.

“Here we go,” he said, and he leaned forward to smack a button on his console, a large one labeled ‘harpoon’. “Come play with us, nasty boy.”

The lasso rocketed through the water, propelled by the same mechanism used to operate the standard-issue harpoon cannon, and Dave and Karkat adjusted, bracing themselves firmly on the ocean floor. Dave listened, heart pounding in his chest, as Hal counted down the distance between the lasso and the Kaiju - one hundred feet, fifty feet, twenty feet, ten feet - and huffed out a triumphant breath as the cable wrapped around Pillar’s flesh column and the AI’s words filled the cramped space.

_"Contact achieved. Securing Lasso."_

“Fuck yes,” Dave said, but before he could get too excited, he felt Prometheus jerk forward violently, dragged as Pillar of Faith began to thrash in protest of being caught by the jaeger’s attack. Dave could feel the horrorterror’s fury as it jerked them forwards and then from side to side, trying to break free of the thick cable wrapped around the fleshy column of its head.

“Shiiiiiiiiiit,” Karkat groaned as they jostled back and forth in the cockpit, alarms flashing and servos shrieking. “Now what?!”

“Giddyup,” Dave replied, and Karkat laughed helplessly as they hit buttons on their console in unison, lifted the Jaeger’s feet up from the ocean floor, and allowed the force of the lasso’s retraction protocol to pull them rapidly towards Pillar of Faith, closing in on the still struggling Kaiju.

“ _Impact in five_ ,” Hal intoned. “ _Four. Three. Two_.”

_Prometheus_ slammed into Pillar of Faith feet first, like a massive metal rancher getting steady as he got up on a disobedient steer. At least that was how it seemed to Dave, who had never even been close enough to touch a cow, let alone have any idea how roping and riding anything bovine might actually go in the real world. He didn’t let this deter him, pulling back on the lasso cable and tightening it so it was even more secure around the column of flesh, Pillar of Faith now bucking and shrieking against their position on its back.

“Hold on!” Karkat yelled, his voice shaking as _Prometheus_ continued to be jerked around violently, the Kaiju attempting to throw them off. “Don’t give a fucking inch!”

“No inches fucking given,” Dave replied through gritted teeth, focusing entirely on getting steady against Pillar’s gruesome body, the lasso getting tighter and tighter around the flesh column. “Scourge, I hope to fuck you’re killing a clown and not watching this awesome display. Not that we’d blame you.”

“ _You do your job, coolkid_ ,” Terezi replied. “ _We’ll do ours_.”

Dave kept his focus on the lasso controls, on stabilizers, but the readouts on his monitor spiked as _Law and Order_ drew their sword cane and engaged Pierrot, stabbing at the Kaiju rather than slicing to avoid further regeneration. He heard the cheers and encouragement over the comms from LOCCENT control and he managed a smile even as he and Karkat were still being jostled violently on Pillar’s back. The Kaiju was trying to buck them off in earnest now, flailing and shrieking and sending up streams of furious bubbles, unable to shake them but trying its hardest.

“Fuck this,” Karkat growled, shifting their weight and swinging around with one of the jaeger’s arms to punch Pillar of Faith in its beady eyes, making the Kaiju shriek all the louder. “We need to get it away from the breach!”

“We got this,” Dave assured him, their rapidly evolving plan swirling through his mind and through the Drift into Karkat’s, who nodded grimly and used momentum from their last punch to swing them around, _Prometheus_ no longer on Pillar’s back but instead sailing through the water in an arc, landing on the rocky ocean floor with a flourish that was practically an acrobatic fucking pirouette. Dave couldn’t help but think it; _Prometheus_ was a powerhouse with style.

“Drag it!” Karkat yelled, mostly for emphasis because Dave was already pulling, hauling the Kaiju away from the breach step by halting step. The Kaiju shrieked and swing its claws at the lasso, but it held firm, cutting into the flesh column and unmoving. Beyond them _Law and Order_ continued stabbing and slicing at Pierrot, punctuating their stabs and slices with heat-seeking rockets that cauterized the creatures flesh. It was in bad shape. “Keep it up, Scourge!” Karkat called into the comm, and Terezi and Vriska responded with furious wordless yells, entirely focused on bringing the clown Kaiju down.

“Prometheus,” Dirk called to them over the comms. “ _You’re making progress, don’t let up! Keep that Kaiju away from the breach_!”

“Yes sir!” Dave yelled, he and Karkat swinging _Prometheus_ ’ torso around to release a barrage of rockets at Pillar of Faith, not enough to kill it but enough to keep it focused on them and their rodeo routine.

“Remind me to never volunteer for a distraction mission again!” Karkat yelled, his voice still shaking along with the Jaeger as a whole. “It’s SO much easier to kill these things, keeping them alive is bullshit!”

“I don’t care how sick this looks,” Dave agreed, smacking his console to turn off shrieking alarms as the Kaiju attempted to drag _Prometheus_ toward it, rip arms out of their sockets. “Give me good news, _Law and Order_ , please kill that fucking clown!”

“ _We can’t all be ‘save a horse, ride a Kaiju, Dave_ ,” Vriska snapped. “ _Keep your shit together._ ”

“ _Going for the head!_ ” Terezi yelled, and Dave watched as the control panel lit up like a Christmas tree, as _Law and Order_ backflipped away from the malformed Kaiju that barely looked like the clown it previously emulated, its body covered in thick black burn marks, its limbs scattered across the ocean floor, useless. As they landed Dave could hear everyone in LOCCENT screaming, and he watched the readings, kept an eye on the view screen, as _Law and Order_ leapt up into the water, firing a barrage of rockets at Pierrot and following them with a smooth and almost graceful swing of their sword cane, aimed directly for the Kaiju’s unprotected throat.

**_Shunk._ **

The sound was audible even over the comms, the devastation visible over the view screen, Pierrot’s head detaching from its body and then being decimated with another barrage of rocket fire, cauterizing the wounds, obliterating the skull. _Law and Order_ landed just beyond the mangled Kaiju corpse, pausing only to turn and empty their clip into the clown’s remains, everything punctuated by the yells and screaming of everyone in LOCCENT control.

They had done it. Pierrot was down.

“GO!” Dave and Karkat yelled at Vriska and Terezi through the comms, and Scourge didn’t need telling twice, the Jaeger tearing through the water at breakneck speeds towards the breach. As they took off _Prometheus_ ’ console began to shriek and blare with still more alarms, issues with the lasso, proximity alerts, energy spikes, and they turned their full attention back to Pillar of Faith, which had begun twisting and turning in a new formation, a calculated action rather than previous random flailing.

“Prometheus, _what’s that Kaiju doing?_ ” Dirk called to them. “ _Why’s it twisting like that?_ ”

“No clue!” Dave yelled back, he and Karkat trying to swing around to get their footing again. “Trying to get back to the breach?”

“ _No,_ ” this time it’s Roxy’s voice over the comms. “ _No, that’s not it_.” Her voice sounds grim, afraid. “ _It’s trying to…_ ”

“ _... Suicide_ ,” Eridan’s voice echoed, finishing Roxy’s sentence. “ _It’s trying to die before they close the breach, to let the Condesce through!”_

“SHIT!” Karkat and Dave suddenly jerked forward, the Kaiju’s twisting and turning suddenly taking hold as the lasso wrapped itself around the monster’s stubby little neck. “Release, release!”

Dave grabbed at levers on the control panel, trying to release the lasso, but it hadn’t been designed for easy disconnection. “Almost!” he yelled, trying to hit the exact konami-code-esque sequence to make their lasso less of a noose. “Shiiiiit!”

“Prometheus,” Roxy called to them, her voice full of dread. “Prometheus _it’s too late_!”

Dave and Karkat watched their readings on the horrorterror go dark across their console, felt the lasso go slack as Pillar of Faith slumped to the ocean floor, beady eyes lifeless, and both of them felt terror grip their hearts as still more alarms shrieked at them, proximity warnings, breach movement warnings, notifiers of _Law and Order_ tearing towards the breach, fast but not fast enough.

“ _She’s coming through!_ ” Roxy wailed. “ _Go, Scourge, GO! You can make it_!”

“ _Not stopping for nothing_!” Vriska yelled. “ _Batterwitch is gonna eat shit!”_

“ _Her flagship is in the throat!_ ” Dirk yelled. _“Don’t stop, go go go!_ ”

Dave finally finished the disconnect sequence, the lasso releasing them from Pillar of Faith’s lifeless form, and they took off after _Law and Order_ , Karkat and Dave both wordless and terrified, desperate and full of adrenaline. They could make it, they were gonna get there, they were so close, they couldn’t give up.

**_“WELL, WELL, WELL, IF IT AIN’T THE LAST VESTIGES OF A PATHETIC REBELLION.”_ **

Dave felt Karkat’s mind being cracked open forcibly like an egg, his copilot screaming in pain that shot right through the Drift and smacked into Dave, hot and lancing, but a mere fraction of what Karkat was feeling. He could hear the screams echoing across the comms as well, Terezi and Vriska in as much pain as they were, Eridan and Sollux in LOCCENT suddenly wailing in agony. It was all of them. She was in every Troll’s mind, and it was killing them.

_**“YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD ESCAPE, DIDN’T YOU?”**_ It was Her voice, even Dave could recognize it, and it was nightmarish, horrifying, grating into the corners of his mind, invasive and sickening. _**“ALL YOU’VE DONE IS DELAYED THE INEVITABLE.”**_

“Fuck... you,” Karkat hissed through clenched teeth, only to groan in pain again.

_**“IN YOUR DREAMS, LITTLE MUTANT**_ ,” The Condesce taunted through her forced mind control pseudo drift. _**“I CAN’T WAIT TO GUT YOU LIKE A LITTLE FISH AN’ SPIT YOU OUT.”**_

Dave gasped through the pain, gritted his teeth, reaching out across the cockpit to grab Karkat’s hand. His copilot responded, still screaming but not giving up, looking over at him with desperate eyes, blood dripping from his nose. _Help us_ , he begged through the Drift, and Dave set his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and then closed them. He let himself fall into the Drift, feeling Karkat’s pain entirely, letting it tear through him, white hot and hideous, and followed its source, finding its origin, flinging himself with all of his mental strength into the Condesce’s searing words.

Dave felt her then, focusing her fury on him in a searing point, full of disdain, mockery.

_**“JUST WHO THE GLUB ARE YOU, KID?”** _

Dave gasped, feeling blood drip out of his own nose, and through his mind he steeled himself, facing down the fish queen from hell herself. He felt other memories below the surface of his mind, echoes of his fights with Dean, the voices of his brother and his sisters, the look on Karkat’s face when they kissed for the first time. He felt the rush of the adrenalin he and his co-pilot had shared when they’d killed their first Kaiju, the flutter in his heart whenever Karkat held his hand, everything they were fighting to change and to save.

He opened his eyes.

“I’m Dave Strider,” he said, his voice sword-sharp and resolved. “And you’re going to get the FUCK out of our head.”

He didn’t know what it was that made it work. Maybe it was the strength of their Drift, maybe it was his stubborn fury, maybe it was sheer dumb luck, but the Condesce suddenly screamed even louder than the Trolls she was connected to, and Dave felt a sickening heat pulse through him, like all of their pain was shot through him directly into Her.

Dave sucked in another breath, shaking from the pain, Karkat’s hand still clutched in his. “ _Get out_ ,” he repeated, his voice full of venom and determination. “ _Of our. HEAD_.”

The connection severed in a microsecond, sending Karkat and Dave reeling backwards in _Prometheus_ , coughing and gasping for breath. Getting their bearings, they exchanged a look. “Holy fuck,” Karkat breathed.

“Yeah,” Dave agreed, coughing and wiping blood off his face. “Fuck.”

“Prometheus!” Dirk yelled over the comm. “ _Status report_!”

“We’re good!” Dave called back, still gasping for breath. “ _Law and Order?_ ”

“ _We’re up!_ ” Terezi yelled, her voice ragged. “ _I don’t know what the fuck you did, coolkid, but we’re fucking here_!”

“GO!” Karkat and Dave yelled in unison. “GO NOW!”

_Law and Order_ charged toward the breach anew, _Prometheus_ joining them, and Dave and Karkat kept yelling as they went, knowing they’d bought a little time but not much. They closed in on the breach, LOCCENT suddenly dead silent over their comms, waiting.

“ _Launching missiles!_ ” Vriska yelled. “Prometheus, _we need more firepower_!”

“We’ve got you!” Karkat replied, slamming his hand down on their console, firing long range missiles towards the weak points in the breach, calculated.

The missiles flew through the water, slamming into the points on the breach, sending shock waves along the ocean floor. Vriska and Terezi whooped, their first missile barrage hitting the second point, the third point, leaving one waiting. They were closer to the breach than they ever had been before, Dave could swear he saw the bow of the Condesce’s ship peaking through.

“'You’re all clear kid',” Dave yelled at _Law and Order_. “'Now let’s blow this thing and go home'!”

Vriska and Terezi yelled at him, but he didn’t hear it, his ears ringing with the blast of the final missile, _Prometheus_ suddenly destabilized as the ocean floor cracked and shook beneath them.

“ _BREACH DESTABILIZING!_ ” Dirk yelled over the comms. “ _There's volcanic activity on the radars, you need to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE_!”

In front of them the Breach began to spit lava, awakened volcanic activity sudden and violent. “She’s gonna blow!” Karkat yelled. “We have to eject! There’s no time!”

_“I’m not leaving_ Law and Order!” Dave heard Vriska scream over the comms.

_“Stop being a fucking idiot and EJECT!”_ Terezi screamed back at her.

_“Eject!”_ Dirk echoed. “ _That’s an order! We can rebuild the Jaegers, we can’t rebuild pilots. GO_!”

“Shit shit shit,” Dave smacked at his console, his head pounding. “Karkat, we gotta eject, Karkat!”

“On it!” He yelled, also hitting at the consoles, alarms blaring and shrieking at them both, the heat of the volcanic activity sending their systems into overdrive, Karkat hitting buttons to release coolant, to compensate. “Dave, we’re gonna get caught in the blast, you have to go!”

“Not without you!” Dave insisted.

“Dave we’re about to fucking blow!” Karkat yelled, his voice frantic. “I need to evac the coolant and you need to FUCKING GO!”

And Karkat reached across the console completed Dave’s ejection sequence.

Dave felt himself rocket upwards, fired out of _Prometheus_ towards the surface, and he screamed, frustrated and panicked, feeling the glow of victory tinged with the terror of not knowing if Karkat made it out in time. It felt like an eternity, a nightmare, trapped in a capsule shooting up and then bobbing, finally, out into open ocean.

Dave smacked against the capsule with his hands, claustrophobia gripping him a moment as he fumbled for the release latch. The front of the capsule blew off, pressure equalizing and Dave’s ears popping furiously as he reeled, sitting up, coughing and shaking and looking around the open ocean, bobbing in his capsule like a cork. “Karkat?” He yelled, whirling around so fast he almost got whiplash. “KARKAT!”

Another eternity rattling around his brain. Dave thought he was going to pass out he was so panicked. Panicked and losing blood after mind-punching the Condesce, had he really done that? Where was his co-pilot? Where was Karkat? Why wasn’t his capsule here, where the FUCK was he?”

The sudden rush and bob of water sounding behind him was like the loudest sigh of relief Dave had ever heard. He whipped around, seeing the capsule rock and wobble in the water and then shudder as the top of it blew away, just as his had done. Karkat was inside. He wasn’t moving.

Dave felt his heart stop. “Karkat,” he breathed, then struggled out of his straps and gear. “Fuck, KARKAT!” He threw himself off of his capsule raft and into the water, swimming as fast as he could, ignoring the pain in every one of his muscles, the shooting agony in his head. The swim felt like another miserable eternity, the panic and terror firmly lodged in Dave’s core, until he finally struggled onto Karkat’s raft, unclipping his co-pilot and shaking him.

“Karkat,” he breathed, throwing his arms around him, trying not to scream with frustration and fear. He had to be fine, he HAD to be, he was Karkat, his co-pilot, his friend, his… Dave swallowed and squeezed him, tears welling up in his eyes. “Karkat come on, Karkat no no NO, wake up, come on!”

Another moment, eternal and aching, until Dave heard a gasp, a cough, a groan. “Dave,” Karkat wheezed. “You’re squeezing too tight, you fuckhead.”

Dave sagged with relief, not letting go. “Fuck,” he groaned. “God fucking shit, Karkat, you scared the FUCK out of me!”

Karkat groaned again, struggled out of Dave’s grip just enough to pull back, look at him. He still had blood on his face, looked half-dead, but he was alive, he was alive and here, they had both survived, they had done it. “... You thought I wasn’t gonna make it?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

Dave snorted, sniffed, wiped his face with his free hand. “I thought you were gonna try to play the hero, you dick,” he said. “Take all the glory in a noble heroic sacrifice or some shit.”

Karkat snorted too, shaking his head, and before Dave could continue down the list of stupid martyrdoms the troll could commit, he’d grabbed him by the collar and dragged Dave into a kiss.

Dave sagged further into Karkat’s arms, clinging to him as they kissed like the world was going to end, like they had just saved the world, like they had made it, they had _done_ it. His body sang with pain and exhaustion while his heart swelled, screamed, ached for him, for Karkat, for what they had found, had shared, would be able to continue to share.

Karkat pulled away after a moment, his face red. “... I wasn’t gonna die without a chance to actually live,” he said, a little breathless. “That’s better than glory.”

Dave laughed. “No shit,” he said, and he kissed Karkat again, deep and softer this time, slower, still needy and relieved, elated, before resting his forehead against his co-pilot's. “No fucking shit.”

“ _Dave, Karkat, are you out there?_ ” Dirk’s voice crackled over the comms. “ _We’ve got you on radar, pick up!”_

Dave laughed, put his hand to his ear to talk into the comm. “We’re here, Dirk,” he called, his voice full of relief. “We’re here, and we’re alive.”

The sound of cheers from LOCCENT echoed over his comm and Dave smiled, resting his head on Karkat’s shoulder. When Dirk spoke again, he sounded relieved, more emotional than Dave had ever heard him before. “ _We’ll get you home_ ,” he said. “ _Sending choppers now.”_

Karkat laughed, a little hysterical, and pressed a kiss to Dave’s cheek. “We did it,” he managed after a moment. “We fucking did it.”

“What,” Dave laughed too, hugging Karkat tight. “Told the Condesce to fuck off and killed her monsters while also making it a fuckload harder for her to regroup?”

“Yep,” Karkat nodded. “We did it. We did the impossible.”

In the distance, Dave watched as another capsule raft paddled toward them, Terezi and Vriska headed in their direction, beaten and bruised but alive. He and Karkat fell silent, holding each other and waiting as the choppers thrummed into view, knowing there would be details and debriefings awaiting them on land. They needed a full damage report, medical attention, to get more news about Equius and Nepeta, but for now, for this moment? They could pause.

Dave kept his head firmly on Karkat’s shoulder, the two of them close in each other’s arms, and he let himself feel, for a moment, that it was over.

It wasn’t, but he could feel like it was, just for a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays!
> 
> It's been over nine months, but here, at long last, is the next chapter of If I Lose Everything In The Fire. I can't thank you all enough for being as patient as you've been. There are two chapters left, and as much as I want to, I'm still not comfortable promising any kind of schedule. Grad school has been the most intense and draining experience of my life, and taking a break over the holidays to write this chapter has been so good for me. It's been rough, terribly so, and the PhD life has been taking a toll on my mental health, but I'm still here, still writing, and still breathing, so, keep being patient with me, I promise I'll put the bow on the end of Dave and Karkat's adventure.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and for your patience. You can find me on tumblr (as hexstuck), and I have a [Ko-Fi](http://ko-fi.com/insomniahex), and any little tips you can throw my way will make my life a little easier.
> 
> Merry Christmas, Happy Candlenights, and good holiday cheer to you all. Thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> Thus begins my epic Pacific Rim-Homestuck fusion AU, featuring more Davekat angst than you can shake a stick at, Mecha, monsters, and all around badassery. My goal is to update weekly, so come back next Thursday for chapter two! 
> 
>  
> 
> [Follow me](http://hexstuck.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for more Homestuck shenanigans.


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